Bruno Le Maire asks manufacturers to welcome more students visiting factories

"We must encourage young people to move towards trades in industry", which lacks arms, because "the image of the industry is out of step with reality," said the minister, suggesting to a parterre of industrialists received at Bercy "to invite the children to go to the factories" to "discover just what it is, how it works and that they have another idea".

"We take primary and secondary school children to visit places of memory, museums, heritage sites, so much the better, it is essential to transmit our memories but our memory is also industrial. And if industry is part of our culture, why shouldn't we invite our children from middle school, from elementary school? ”he said.

According to him, "the only way to remedy" the deindustrialisation which has affected France for 40 years is to "recreate an industrial will".

"Relocation is essential and vital for employment, but also for the fight against extremes, to restore confidence," added the Minister.

Because, "where a factory closes, there is a permanence of the National Front which opens, it is a political reality", added Mr. Le Maire, who was speaking at the end of a conference on the relocation of essential activities on the national territory, organized by Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister Delegate in charge of Industry.

On deindustrialization, Mr. Le Maire, several times minister, made his mea-culpa: "we are collectively responsible", he said, citing "the politicians, the heads of companies, the industrial sectors, all those who invented the famous concept of + fabless industries + (companies without factories, dependent on subcontracting in low-cost countries, NDR), all those who covered with a scientific varnish what was a political defeat " .

"France has abandoned its industry and we are still paying the economic price, the financial price, the price in terms of jobs and the political price," he said.

Believing that, without industry, there is neither independence, nor energy transformation, nor social cohesion, Agnès Pannier-Runacher for her part recalled that jobs in this sector are 70% "in municipalities with less than 20.000 inhabitants ".

For a "shock of reindustrialisation", it is necessary "to try to reconcile, often the same ones besides, those who want drugs produced in France, jobs in the territories, with those who relay a backward image in industry without seeing that our investments drastically improve the working conditions of employees, create wealth and help us (...) to face the environmental and digital transitions in concrete terms, "she added.

She recalled the six sectors considered "strategic": health, agrifood, electronics, nuclear, industrial applications of 5G, essential industry inputs (chemicals, materials, metals, processed raw materials).