Peugeot-Citroen: “Made in France” under strain

The restructuring plan of PSA (Peugeot-Citroen), France’s foremost car manufacturer, is “no coincidence”, leads the editorial in Le Figaro. Yesterday PSA announced the cutting of 8,000 jobs in France and the closure of its factory in Aulnay-sous-Bois, near Paris.

The conservative daily takes this to be a “formidable trial of initiation” for the socialist government and analyses the causes of this “social catastrophe” —

What's wrong with the car manufacturer? First and foremost, it suffers from being too European and, above all, from being too French. Here is the paradox: held up as an example for having kept nearly half its production in France, unlike Renault, which survives thanks to its low-cost models built in Romania and Morocco, PSA is suffering from the evils that are methodically destroying our industry.

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The leftist daily Libération in turn raises the role that Europe has played in this “fiasco” —

Europe bears some of the responsibility for flagging French fortunes. By pushing free trade, it opened the market to the Koreans; the latter have profited from it immensely, while European sales in Korea are a secret (...). Europe has also had a hand in financing new plants built in Eastern Europe, which have left the French factories in a hard place. But awareness is dawning. The European Cars 21 report published in June recommends that open markets become strictly reciprocal to ’maintain a strong industrial base.’