There will probably be announcements of site closures in the coming weeks and months
declared the Minister of Industry Mr. Ferracci at the microphone of France Inter on Saturday November 9. The social report will be counted in thousands of jobs
according to the minister, who recommends a European response, in particular to support the automobile sector.
He spent three hours Friday in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire) on the site of one of the two Michelin factories promised to close, greeted by ten minutes of boos.
The employees are upset, angry, we can understand this because the way the announcement was made […] was not a dignified manner
estimated Mr. Ferracci during the program We can't stop the Eco
: The employees were informed very late, Michelin management did not come to make the announcement directly, eye to eye […] it's regrettable.
Those around him, however, say that the people whistling were often not Michelin employees
.
The French tire giant announced on November 5 the closure before 2026 of the Cholet and Vannes (Morbihan) sites, which have a total of 1,254 employees.
“Let no one be left without a solution”
Mr. Ferracci qualified as very constructive
contacts with local elected officials, the group's union organizations and management, with whom it intends to follow the action plan put in place. Michelin's commitment is that no one is left without a solution
he recalled.
Thursday, in Colmar he had promised lots of resources
and said he wanted to find “dignified solutions” for employees affected by social plans.
More broadly, for the automobile sector in difficulty, for which he announced an emergency plan, Mr. Ferracci advocated a approach to supporting the European automotive industry
.
The value chains are completely integrated. You have suppliers in Germany for manufacturers who are in France, and you have suppliers who are in France for manufacturers who are in Germany. Commercial protection against Chinese vehicles must be designed at European level
he said.
For his part, the Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, reacted during his visit to the Salon Made in France, in Paris, on Saturday morning. We are in an extraordinarily demanding international situation with the cost of raw materials, the question of energy, aggressive commercial practices from many countries and therefore we must not be at all naive, we must be extremely firm and extremely demanding vis-à-vis the other continental plates which create instability and create fragility
he declared.
European automotive suppliers sounded the alarm this week over the unprecedented number of job cuts in the sector.
32,000 job cuts in Europe were announced in the first half of 2024, more than during the Covid pandemic, in this sector which employs 1.7 million employees in Europe.
The automobile industry, losing competitiveness compared to Asia and the United States, is affected by the decline in sales on the continent, low-cost Chinese competition and the slow pace of electrification.
“European ecological bonus”
Among the measures mentioned, Mr. Ferracci envisages an ecological bonus on a European scale
and common European loan
to finance support mechanisms
to the sector.
From the first half of 2025, the European Commission said that it was going to prioritize a + clean industrial act +, that is to say European legislation on clean industry, in which we will be able to put in place a certain number of measurements
.
Automotive is not the only sector affected. In aeronautics, the defense and space branch of Airbus, which notably manufactures satellites and has 35,000 employees, is expected to cut 2,500 jobs in 2026. Mr. Ferracci indicated that he would ensure that there were no there will be no layoffs, as employees will be reclassified in other Airbus entities.
French chemistry, particularly sensitive to energy and electricity costs, said in mid-October it feared losing 15,000 jobs
in three years out of 200,000, or 8%.
Already a thousand job cuts have taken place in recent months at Solvay, Syensqo, Weylchem Lamotte, in addition to the 670 planned by the petrochemical group ExxonMobil in Port-Jérome in Normandy.
In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the bankruptcy of Vencorex, on the chemical platform of Pont-de-Claix (Isère), puts nearly 5,000 jobs at stake
in other industrial sectors that the group supplies, estimates the CGT.
Here too, the dropout is perceptible throughout Europe. German chemistry, the world's largest, is paying the consequences of the loss of cheap Russian gas. Unilever, Evonik, BASF have also announced workforce reductions.
