Dominique Estrosi-Sassone, senator for the Alpes-Maritimes and national secretary for housing in the shadow cabinet, discusses the necessary reindustrialization of France.
For a long time, France has been able to boast a cutting-edge, active and proactive industry, providing growth exceeding 5%. An Industry inscribed at the heart of heritage, contributing to our identity, to the soul of a Homeland of work and science, where autonomy is won through the idea, force organized in collective design guaranteeing power and solidarity. Yet the thread of success was broken forty years ago to the detriment of our sovereignty.
Deindustrialization has proven to be massive thanks to the health and Ukrainian crises. Disrupted supply chains and drug shortages have reignited fierce competition between partners for control of production that had previously been offshored. They have demonstrated the need to restore room for maneuver to public authorities to support the key sectors of an economy that the hazard of a less and less multipolar world has made dependent.
Heavy responsibilities
In short, has the economic situation allowed the blacklisting of a heavy toll, since the share of the secondary sector in our GDP has been halved since the oil shock, leading to a loss of jobs and skills? and investment capacity in R&D, widening a trade deficit that is now abysmal and weakening entire territories.
The current President, who seems strong in his desire to act, also bears heavy responsibilities for the state of insufficiency which is affecting our industrial capacities. Its recent sovereignist doctrine, a burst of the 25th hour, follows the sell-off of Alstom, the sale of Arabelle turbines, but also the takeover of Exxela by the American Heico. If the presidential change of heart is salutary, it is also very late!
Beyond France, it is also the direction of European integration which has led to the disintegration of an old industrial fabric. Our community choices, lulled by the myth of tertiary Europe, have led to the signing of unequal treaties devoid of reciprocity.
However, to be reborn and guarantee a lasting industrial recovery, it is necessary to act on three levers.
We will not be able, first of all, to do without a major reform of professional training, at a time when two out of three business leaders declare, in the manufacturing industry alone, to be experiencing recruitment difficulties and while The DARES “Professional 2030” report estimates 165,000 new jobs to be filled in industry within seven years.
It is also in the area of taxation that innovation and investment should be encouraged, but also risk capital should be strengthened. Production taxes, particularly in the manufacturing sector, thus remain significantly higher than in other EU countries since they represent more than three times the added value.
Heavier labor costs in France
Finally, the cost of labor, essential in an economy where price competitiveness remains a determining factor in the terms of trade, is much heavier in France. This differential is of the order of a third if we consider all 27 partners and competitors in the internal market.
If, as General de Gaulle thought, “democracy is confused with national sovereignty”, I would add in the same spirit that the vigor of our economy, that is to say growth, cannot be sustainable if it is thought at the expense of industrial sovereignty. In this France of Bodin, ardent defender of the “absolute power to decide”, the secondary sector must once again fly the tricolor flag. This recovery is underway but too timidly. Let us ensure that France is once again able to be the driving force of a Europe of industrial know-how in the future.
2023-12-11 09:48:32
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