Question 13315 — industry

Summary

Mr. Auguste Evrard alerts the Minister of Labor and Solidarity on the social consequences of the judicial recovery of ARC France, pronounced on January 7, 2026 by the Lille commercial court and on the capacity of public support systems to respond to the scale of the job cuts envisaged in the Audomarois catchment area. The sole takeover offer submitted for examination by the court on March 10, 2026 would provide, according to available information, several hundred layoffs as well as a significant volume of early retirements and voluntary departures. On a site employing around 3,500 employees, a workforce which itself represents less than a quarter of the jobs on the site at the start of the 2000s, located in a town of nearly 10,000 inhabitants and a living area of ​​more than 116,000 inhabitants whose economy is historically and structurally backed by the glassmaking activity, the effect of such a restructuring would be profound and lasting. In Pas-de-Calais, where large industrial establishments structure the economic and social balance of the territories, each massive job loss has chain consequences on subcontractors, local businesses, local public services and community finances. THE The Audomarois basin does not have an industrial fabric that is sufficiently diversified and dense to absorb, within a reasonable time frame, a massive influx of job seekers from the same productive sector. The profiles concerned, qualified workers, specialized technicians, personnel trained in specific and energy-intensive glassmaking processes, do not necessarily find immediate equivalents in the local economic fabric. In a a department which already experiences an unemployment rate structurally higher than the national average and which has undergone several recent industrial restructurings, the absorption capacity of the labor market appears limited. The public employment services of Pas-de-Calais, already mobilized by the cumulative effects of successive regional restructurings, could find themselves unable to provide individualized support reinforced without additional human and financial resources. The issue goes beyond just the administrative management of redundancies: it concerns the quality of reclassification pathways, the adaptation of training to local economic realities and the prevention of a lasting increase in long-term unemployment in an already weakened territory. Furthermore, it was indicated that age measures, likely to limit the number of layoffs dry among the employees closest to retirement, would have been excluded during discussions with state services. The MP would like to know whether this orientation has actually been adopted and, if so, on what legal and budgetary foundations it is based, even though more than 200 million euros in public aid have been committed to this issue since 2019. In this context, the MP asks the Government what mechanisms will be mobilized as a priority for ARC France employees, particularly in terms of long-term partial activity, reclassification leave, professional security contracts or reinforced reclassification units, taking into account the specificities of an employment area with low absorption capacity. He also wants to know how the public employment services of Pas-de-Calais will be concretely reinforced to cope with the foreseeable influx of job seekers, according to what timetable and with what additional resources. Finally, he questions him on the possibility of considering age measures or derogatory measures for the oldest employees, in order to reduce the number of redundancies, as well as on the binding social commitments which would be required of the buyer, in particular in terms of maintaining a level minimum employment on the Arques site, as an explicit condition for any public support.

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