Paris (AFP)

"Unacceptable and shameful", "unthinkable" according to the unions: Sanofi announced Friday that it would cut up to 1,700 jobs in Europe, including a thousand in France, even as the pharmaceutical group saw its sales boosted in the first quarter by the crisis sanitary.

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 relate to positions "for the most part on permanent contracts, in particular" support functions, sales and research-related platforms ", explained Olivier Bogillot .

This new plan of layoffs is "huge. It is unthinkable for us," protested to AFP Florence Faure, coordinator CFDT, first union at Sanofi, promising to "fight these layoffs which have not not necessary ".

"It's catastrophic, unbearable, unacceptable and shameful," also criticized AFP Thierry Bodin, CGT coordinator at Sanofi. "The group only wants to keep what is most profitable" and "to withdraw from the least profitable drugs, even if they have a major therapeutic interest. This is health for the money."

The latest workforce reduction plan, announced in June 2019 (nearly 470 job cuts in research and development in France and Germany), "is not finished until management announces a new one," he said. he criticizes.

In December, a few months after the arrival of the Briton Paul Hudson, the group's first non-French-speaking boss, Sanofi announced that it wanted to save two billion euros by 2022, in particular with a withdrawal from diabetes and the cardiovascular system to capitalize on oncology.

"We are not at all in a plan that would follow the Covid crisis, as we can see in other sectors," said Olivier Bogillot.

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

If no closure of the 18 factories located in France is planned, other tertiary sites will be affected, notably at the international headquarters in Paris or at the Val de Bièvre campus (Val-de-Marne).

- Four billion dividends -

The laboratory, manufacturer of Doliprane, posted a turnover of nearly 9 billion euros in the first quarter, with an increase due in part to the sales of painkillers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Against the flow of a number of companies, Sanofi also planned to pay a dividend higher than that of the previous year to its shareholders, for a total amount of nearly 4 billion.

"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, which is working on the development of two vaccines against Covid-19, expected in 2021, had created a lively controversy last month, when 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