Antoine Armand, accompanied by the Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, Marc Ferracci, is on the Normandy site this Monday, October 14, in the morning, to defend the maintenance of production in France in the face of ongoing negotiations with an American fund.
Enough to revive many bad industrial memories. A few days after the announcement of negotiations between Sanofi and the American investment fund CD & R for the sale of the subsidiary producing Doliprane, the Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, and the Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, Marc Ferracci, will visit the Sanofi production site in Lisieux (Calvados) this Monday, October 14. They arrived around 10 a.m., according to a journalist from Liberation present on site, in order to support the production of Doliprane “made in France”. The welcoming committee included the president of Sanofi, Frédéric Oudéa.
The tenant of Bercy intends to discuss “with employees and their representatives of guarantees, conditions because producing Doliprane in France is our industrial and sovereign and health strategy and it must remain so”, he said on Sunday on BFMTV.
The employees called a strike for this Monday, with a rally at 9 a.m. in front of the gates of the Normandy factory. The discussion between Sanofi and the American fund, “very, very bad news”, was alarmed by Christophe Quillé, of the CGT, and a Sanofi employee for forty years. “We know that American pension funds are short-term investments,” he recalled on Saturday on France Bleu. “We know the past: we close, then a few years later, a new buyer arrives. So he cuts staff numbers and after a while, sells the furniture. For his part, worried Thierry Van Boxstael, co-secretary of the local union of the CGT of Lisieux, at the microphone of BFMTV.
On the set of the 24-hour news channel, the young Minister of the Economy shows his muscles on Sunday. “My commitment is that Doliprane continues to be produced in France, by employees in France,” insisted Antoine Armand. Asked about a possibility of blocking this sale, he even left this very interventionist door open: “We will ask for extremely strong guarantees, likely to reassure both employees and the French in the medium term. […] and if this is not the case, nothing will seem forbidden to me at first sight.”
But before reaching this end, the government is convinced of obtaining commitments to maintain industrial sites in France by Sanofi’s consumer products subsidiary. “We will discuss these commitments within the framework of the procedure that has been introduced in recent years, which is called the foreign investment control procedure,” which possibly makes it possible to block the takeover of a foreign company, said the Minister Delegate in charge of Industry Marc Ferracci on France 3. “I very sincerely think that commitments will be made, which will be very solid, both to maintain jobs and to maintainr security of supply for the French» in medicine, he added.
“Strategic”
In an email to Libération this Monday morning, Sanofi’s communications department refuted any “relocation” future. “This project will have no impact on employment in France. The Compiègne and Lisieux sites are so strategic for Opella’s activity [la filiale de Sanofi produisant le Doliprane, NDLR] that it is absurd to imagine for a single second that their future would not be assured,” assured the French pharmaceutical group.
The announcement of the passage of the best-selling drug in France under the American flag raised eyebrows among politicians of all stripes, some of whom urged the government to block this operation, in the name of French health sovereignty.
In a column published by the Tribune on Sunday, all PS parliamentarians took up their pen to in turn oppose this operation : “The government must refuse the American takeover of Sanofi’s Lisieux factory, and require Sanofi to preserve national control of these activities which are essential for our sovereignty”, they wrote.
Update : at 11:17 a.m., with the arrival of ministers at the Lisieux factory, as well as Sanofi’s email to Libé.
