The flat lowlands around Dunkirk are changing. Motorists zooming along the A16 highway that links Paris with France’s northernmost coastline can see towering cranes and vast, newly erected, gray walls on the outskirts of the port city.
The flagship €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) gigafactory being built by French startup Verkor is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to transform an area devastated by industrial decline into Europe’s largest hub for electric-vehicle batteries. Low-carbon businesses are expected to create 20,000 local jobs in the next decade.
Macron has called the hub an example of a "thing that works.” Yet his efforts to showcase his green reindustrialization push are failing to convince voters ahead of this week’s European Parliament elections in a region that has become a stronghold for the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen.
"These new jobs will end up being taken by people who are more qualified or by workers brought in by the companies,” Victoria Lesieu, 20, said as she rushed between tables at a cafe in central Dunkirk where she earns some cash as a waitress.
Like many young people in a region that has suffered from the demise of industries such as steel and mining since the second half of last century, she and her partner didn’t go to college and have no fixed employment. She said they have applied to a hundred job openings proposed by newly installed firms without success.
Local officials say they’re investing in training, but they also say bringing in external labor is inevitable and forecast that newcomers will need at least 12,000 new homes in 10 years. This is also set to put pressure on the transportation network.
Lesieu, who voted for Le Pen in the 2022 presidential election, said she is losing hope for a better future and blames Macron. "He has never done anything for us,” she said.
She and others who share her discontent will have a chance to sanction the president again in Sunday’s EU vote. The National Rally came first in Dunkirk in the last EU ballot five years ago even as the city was already attracting investors. This time, countrywide polls put its support at around 33%, or more than double that of Macron’s Renaissance party.
The National Rally makes no secret of its aim to use the ballot to lay the groundwork for Le Pen, who came second in the last two presidential run-offs, to go one better in 2027.
"These elections may be European but the stakes are domestic,” said Yohann Duval, a National Rally city counselor in Dunkirk. "Be it here or anywhere else in France, I’m expecting that we’ll continue to widen our support base by addressing real-life struggles.”
He cited the anti-immigration and nationalist policies highlighted in the party’s EU campaign.
The northern "Hauts-de-France” region is home to 6 million people and has the nation’s highest unemployment rates. Once the country’s leading industrial hub, its economic hardship started in the 1960s as traditional activities declined. Poverty and joblessness have pushed voters toward Le Pen, and it’s become a critical battleground in her party’s efforts to establish itself in the mainstream of French politics. Many of her supporters were once socialists or communists, or had left-wing parents.
France’s third-biggest port, Dunkirk is known for the mass evacuation of allied soldiers in the early part of World War II. Four years later the D-Day landings took place on the beaches of Normandy, along the coast to the southwest, and world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden will be in France to mark the 80th anniversary of that event on Thursday.
Dunkirk sought to change things around a decade ago, when then-mayor Patrice Vergriete bet on a decarbonized economy in a bid to court investors.
"We were really in a hole, so we decided to move on from 20th-century industry and go green before others did,” said Vergriete, who is now Macron’s transport minister but still holds the title of head of Dunkirk’s metropolitan area. Many projects are partly funded by EU loans, he added.
Investors such as Verkor have been attracted by the city’s deep-water harbor, rail connections, and proximity to EV factories in France and neighboring countries — as well as billions of euros in government-backed support. Taiwanese battery maker ProLogium Technology Co. has pledged to invest €5.2 billion to build a giant plant. French nuclear group Orano and China’s XTC New Energy Materials have earmarked €1.5 billion to produce components.
Dunkirk has also revamped its seafront to create a modern promenade full of cafes and restaurants looking out onto the golden, sandy beach. New hotels have gone up, and public transportation has been made free.
"People don’t realize how lucky they are to live in a city that’s been through such an extraordinary dynamic,” said Nathalie Marecaux, a 45-year-old wallet seller at the weekly open air market in the upscale neighborhood of Malo-les-Bains. She declined to say who would get her vote but said she would never support Le Pen.
Brahim, an Uber driver who declined to give his surname, agrees that Dunkirk has come a long way. But this isn’t enough to convince him to back Macron again in the EU election. He said it may be time to give Le Pen a chance, even if as a French citizen of North African descent he would feel uncomfortable endorsing a far-right, anti-immigration party.
"We’ve seen more of the same for decades,” he said. "Maybe I’ll vote for them just for the sake of trying something completely new.”
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