Paris (AFP)

Sanofi announced Friday the loss of 1,700 jobs in Europe, including a thousand in France, a departure plan which comes at a time when the pharmaceutical group saw its sales boosted in the first quarter by the health crisis.

Marcy-l'Étoile, June 16: during a visit by Emmanuel Macron to its factory in the Rhône, Sanofi announced with great fanfare 610 million euros to focus on its vaccines and the creation of a new factory in France with 200 jobs created.

That day, Sanofi does not mention a departure plan, even if "the French authorities knew that we had a reorganization to be put in place," Olivier Bogillot, France's president of the pharmaceutical group, told AFP on Friday. .

The reorganization, presented to the European social partners on Friday, includes a plan of 1,700 departures in Europe, including a thousand of the 25,000 employees in France (out of 100,000 worldwide).

Departures in France will be "exclusively volunteer-based", will be spread over three years and concern positions "for the most part on permanent contracts, in particular" support functions, sales and research-related platforms ", detailed Olivier Bogillot .

The project is part of a new strategy launched in December: a few months after the arrival of the British Paul Hudson, the group's first non-French-speaking boss, Sanofi had announced that it would save two billion euros by 2022, notably with a disengagement in diabetes and the cardiovascular system to focus on oncology.

"We are not at all in a plan that would follow the Covid crisis, as we can see in other sectors", but it corresponds to the "new strategy" of the group, said Olivier Bogillot.

A meeting is scheduled Monday to "roll out the strategic sheet" to the French social partners, added Mr. Bogillot, without specifying the compensation that would be offered to employees or the envelope provided to finance this departure window.

Will be concerned "certain sites in Ile-de-France on support functions, at the international headquarters on rue de la Boétie in Paris at the Val de Bièvre campus (Val-de-Marne) or other places in France but especially on our tertiary sites ", said President France.

There will be no plant closure, on the 18 located in France, however assured Sanofi.

- Four billion dividends -

With this new plan, "it is the continued dismantling of the group and the outsourcing of activities. Sanofi wants to move from a total of 300 drugs for sale to only a hundred. It seems that the group does not want keep what is most profitable ", reacted to AFP Thierry Bodin, CGT coordinator at Sanofi.

The laboratory, manufacturer of Doliprane, posted a turnover in the first quarter of nearly 9 billion euros, an increase of 6.9% due in half to the pandemic of Covid-19, during which sales of drugs painkillers have been boosted.

The group, whose annual turnover reached 36 billion euros in 2019, has planned to pay a dividend higher than that of the previous year to its shareholders, for a total amount of nearly 4 billion. Against the flow of many companies that have either reduced or canceled their dividend due to the health crisis.

"It is science that leads us to make a certain number of choices. You put your resources where you can make a difference", explained to AFP Olivier Bogillot, "This does not prevent us from showing our investors that we are very competitive. "

Sanofi is in particular one of the main global players in the production of vaccines, and it is currently working on the development of two vaccines against Covid-19, expected in 2021.

But the group had created a heated controversy last month, when its managing director Paul Hudson had raised the possibility of favoring the United States, which invested in its research against the coronavirus. Emmanuel Macron notably called for this vaccine to be "extracted from the laws of the market".

On the Paris Stock Exchange, the Sanofi share was almost stable (+ 0.10% to 91.95 euros) Friday at midday, in a clearly rising market (+ 1.80%).

© 2020 AFP