Amid abandoned coal mines and a shuttered engine plant, a gleaming new factory looms like a phoenix over Billy-Berclau, a small industrial town in northern France. Inside, 700 newly hired workers are building the next generation of electric vehicle batteries for an automotive sales company — part of a grand project to revive the faltering fortunes of the wider region.
A “Battery Valley” Here, industries are emerging from the ruins of those that shut down during the wave of globalization. Three more giant electric car battery plants are expected to open by 2026, proof of a reindustrialization strategy that President Emmanuel Macron's government has promoted as an antidote to far-right economics. National Rally PartyWhich has strengthened its hold in areas devastated by job losses.
“Industry is an anti-national weapon because in places where anger has grown, we are restoring hope,” Mr. Macron’s deputy industry minister, Roland Lescure, said earlier this year.
But the gamble is not working out politically. Bailly-Berclau and nearly every other town in the Pas-de-Calais region handed the National Rally a landslide victory in parliamentary elections last week — a trend that could be repeated in the final round of voting on Sunday.
“There's a feeling of isolation,” said Andre Kuchinsky, president of the Artois-Flandres Industrial Park, an area of more than 1,100 acres where the automotive sales company, known as ACC, is expanding its new plant. “You have a government that emphasized growth and job creation, but many people are still struggling and feel insecure,” he said. “A new factory doesn't solve this problem, but moving to a far-flung area seems to solve this problem.”
Around Billy-Barcalau, people are talking in hushed tones about a coming political upheaval.
“There used to be thousands of jobs. The new factory is just a small fraction of the jobs lost,” said Mark Vandamme, 54, sipping a beer at the Europe Café, a local hangout where people buy lottery tickets or have a coffee before work.
“People feel defeated and angry,” Mr. Vandamme said. “The cost of everything is going up, and they’re also worried about immigration,” he said. “The National Rally is promising to fix all this, and many people are saying, let’s give them a chance to run things.”
The Battery Valley initiative hoped to address such concerns. The Pas-de-Calais, a former mining region that stretches from the flat plains around Bille-Berclau on the coast to Dunkirk and the Belgian border, has undergone painful cycles of industrial destruction and rebirth since the end of World War II.
Heavily unionized, Pas-de-Calais tended to vote for communist or left-wing candidates representing workers' rights before supporting more centrist politicians in the early 2000s. In the 2012 presidential elections, socialist François Hollande won more than half the vote.
But by then, globalization had begun to take its toll. For decades, tire makers, steel and paint plants, as well as French automakers Renault and Peugeot (which is now part of Stellantis after merging with Italian automaker Fiat) had been shifting manufacturing to low-cost countries to counter cheaper competition from Eastern Europe and Asia.
Marine Le Pen, the right-wing candidate from a movement then called the National Front, took advantage of the illness to transform the image of a party long associated with overt racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. supported workers and purchasing powerHe campaigned heavily in French cities that had lost jobs due to globalization – particularly in the Pas-de-Calais, where he set up his election office to appeal to working-class voters.
By the time Mr. Macron entered the French presidential election in 2017, the region had lost about 40,000 more industrial jobs. That year, Ms. Le Pen won 52 percent of the Pas-de-Calais vote, nearly double the vote for Mr. Macron. In the 2022 presidential election, she won 57 percent of the vote.
Mr. Macron, who once defended globalization, has now turned to a new priority: reindustrializing France with the “technologies of the future.” In Battery Valley, Taiwan's Prologium is expected to open a battery plant, along with two others involving French and international investors. A series of new electric battery recycling plants will also be built. Mr. Macron says 20,000 direct jobs will be created over the next decade, and a similar number of indirect jobs.
Inside ACC, which is co-owned by Stellantis, Mercedes and TotalEnergies, some are clinging to Mr. Macron’s promise of a better future. The plant, which is the length of eight football fields and opened last summer, received about 840 million euros ($910 million) in state subsidies. It is on a site once dominated by Stellantis subsidiary Française de Mécanique, which makes internal combustion engines, whose workforce has fallen from 6,000 at its peak to about 1,400. As it closes, ACC has promised to hire back its 700 former employees.
These include Christophe Lequime, 52, who built car engines for 22 years before being retrained by the ACC to work on lithium car batteries.
Billy-Barclau's fluctuating fortunes can be traced back to his family, starting with his grandfather, who lost his job when the mines closed in the 1960s but found work at the Facility Française de Mécanique. Mr. Lequime's father and mother spent their careers at the same factory, and Mr. Lequime followed in their footsteps. When layoffs came, he jumped at the chance to work at ACC.
“This is a great opportunity for a fresh start,” he said.
But such optimism was not reflected in the wider community.
In last weekend's parliamentary elections, local National Rally politician Bruno Bilde, who is close to Ms. Le Pen, won nearly 60 percent of the vote and defeated his main rival, Steve Bossert, the center-left mayor of Bille-Berclau.
Mr Bilde declined a request for an interview. But before the election, he was actively working to attract voters to the ACC factory, posting a photo on x He posed with a group of his supporters waving National Rally pamphlets. He wrote, “Thank you for your welcome,” and added: “National Rally is the leading party for workers!”
Such talk troubles ACC officials. The National Rally has branded electric vehicles as the cars of the elite, and its platform calls for an end to the European Union’s ban on gas-powered vehicles from 2035, designed to combat climate change, said Mathieu Hubert, the company’s secretary general.
“I can’t say I’m not worried about it,” Mr. Hubert said, adding that European automakers are racing to stay ahead of Asian and American rivals by building cleaner vehicles, retooling supply chains and making batteries. “This factory represents the future.”
For Mr. Bossart, the mayor of Bley-Berclau, the rise of the far right in a region receiving billions of dollars in new investment is a paradox that goes beyond economics.
“We have a lot of people who own their homes, who get good pensions. People have jobs and the unemployment rate is low,” said Mr. Brossart, 28, who was born in Billy-Berclau. “And we are attracting big investments like the ACC factory.”
Still, locals had a growing sense of insecurity, even though the town did not have as much crime as larger cities. But on television, news programs often showed images of migrants in Calais near the English Channel and linked them to reports of crime, raising concerns.
Mr. Brossart said there was also a sense among people that Mr. Macron was out of touch with them and did not understand their struggles. They were angry that he raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, and felt he had not done enough to address the cost-of-living crisis, including high energy bills that the National Rally has promised to reduce.
“The region is more attractive than ever for investors,” Mr. Bossert said. “But people are growing increasingly angry. They are showing their frustration as they prepare to vote.”
Ségolène Le Stradic Billy-Barklau contributed reporting.