Question 16450 — industry

Summary

Mr. Alexandre Allegret-Pilot draws the attention of the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industrial, Energy and Digital Sovereignty to the localization in France of the most strategic know-how in the air conditioning sector and to the effectiveness of the commitments obtained during the acquisition of the Atlantic Group. The adaptation of the French fleet to global warming will lead, over the next fifteen years, to a massive deployment of air conditioning and reversible heat pumps, as heatwave episodes and their consequences on the health of the elderly and on the continuity of school services increase. This effort will represent an investment of several tens of billions of euros for equipment alone and therefore a major market for national industry. But France only has one manufacturer large-scale, the Atlantic Group, which does not master the most technological components (the inverter technology compressor and the power electronics which control it) and as such has long depended on its Japanese partner Fujitsu General. The acquisition of a majority stake by Paloma Rheem in the capital of Atlantic, finalized on May 22, 2026 after examination under the control of foreign investments in France, gave rise to an economic agreement accompanied by commitments relating to research and development, intellectual property, the development of the production of heat pumps and thermodynamic water heaters, as well as the maintenance of employment and training centers. These commitments, however useful they may be, do not appear to cover the design and manufacturing on national soil of the aforementioned critical components, nor the transfer of the corresponding know-how towards French engineers and technicians, according to the same method used by Korea and then China to trace their sectors. They also raise the question of their effectiveness: if the monetary and financial code theoretically allows the Minister to order compliance with the conditions under penalty, or even to pronounce a financial sanction, the concrete scope of these levers appears uncertain once the operation definitively completed, the dismantling of an acquisition or the sanction of a strategic industrial partner being difficult to envisage in practice. The fulfillment of commitments therefore rests, essentially, on the good faith of the investor. He therefore asks him if the commitments obtained within the framework of this agreement provide for the establishment in France of an inverter compressor research and manufacturing unit. and power electronics, operated by French personnel trained by Fujitsu; under what terms, over what duration and by means of what public indicators compliance with all commitments will be monitored; what sanctions would actually be applied in the event of a breach, given the difficult reversal nature of the operation; and if the Government intends to localize the components strategic conditions a systematic condition for the authorization of foreign investments in the air conditioning and heat pump sector.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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