Paris (AFP)
The Secretary of State for the Economy Agnès Pannier-Runacher estimated Wednesday that restructuring must be accepted at Renault, which will benefit from a loan guaranteed by the State of 5 billion euros.
"We are supporting Renault in one of the most serious crises in its history, and to do this, we must accept that there is some restructuring," she said at the microphone of France Inter.
"These are jobs that are cut, it's not people who leave, it's not people who are unemployed overnight," she said.
"I was too marked in my youth by the job cuts in the steel industry, textiles, where we started by saying + nothing will happen + and finally we looked at whole swathes of the economy", a reminded the minister.
"We pushed him to his limits and we pushed Renault to reconsider very clearly for example the question of Maubeuge," she added.
The Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire congratulated Tuesday for having obtained the preservation of employment and industrial capacity on the site of Maubeuge (North), threatened with merger with that of Douai.
In financial difficulty and victim of the collapse of the car market, Renault announced Friday the loss of 15,000 jobs worldwide, including 4,600 in France, with voluntary departures and without layoffs, as part of an economy plan until 'in 2023.
Of the 14 industrial sites of Renault in France, only one is definitely doomed to closure, that of Choisy-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne) whose employees went on strike Tuesday against the transfer of activity from recycling planned to Flins (Yvelines).
© 2020 AFP