By Noémie Bisserbe
PARIS--For the past two years Socialist heavyweight Arnaud
Montebourg has maintained his position in France's government
despite launching periodic attacks on the rightward drift of
President François Hollande. On Monday, hours after his latest
broadside, Mr. Montebourg was shown the door.
Mr. Hollande dissolved his cabinet and Mr. Montebourg said he
wouldn't seek a position in the next team.
Mr. Montebourg's exit highlights the deep divisions within a
government facing evaporating popular support and whose policies
have so far delivered few results. France's economy is stuck in
stagnation and struck by growing unemployment.
His exit--accompanied by that of Education Minister Benoît Hamon
and Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti who also had lambasted Mr.
Hollande's austerity drive in recent days--risks leaving the
president with a thinning base.
He might also prove a greater threat outside of the government,
said Antonio Barroso, a political analyst at Teneo
Intelligence.
"The unruly left wing of the Socialists will recover one of
their most prominent spokespersons, who at the same time is likely
to start positioning himself as a candidate for the 2017
presidential election," Mr. Barroso said.
Mr. Montebourg, who belongs to the left wing of the ruling
Socialist Party, was appointed industry minister in May 2012, after
his surprise breakthrough to third place in a round of presidential
primaries a few months earlier.
A vocal critic of the austerity policies applied across the euro
zone in the wake of the sovereign-debt crisis, Mr. Montebourg stood
out with his call to impose social and environmental taxes on
imports to protect France's jobs and industry.
Mr. Hollande didn't always follow his proposals.
In 2012, Mr. Montebourg threatened to veto PSA Peugeot Citroën
SA's plan to close a car-assembly factory near Paris. Months later,
he vowed to nationalize ArcelorMittal's French operations when the
steelmaker said it wanted to shut down two blast furnaces at
Florange in Lorraine, in eastern France.
PSA eventually closed the car plant and ArcelorMittal the
furnaces.
In March, however, Mr. Montebourg was given a bigger brief and
promoted to economy minister.
He waged a battle to extract concessions from General Electric
Co. in exchange for granting the American conglomerate permission
to buy most of the assets of French power-and-rail engineering
group Alstom SA.
The government gave its green light to GE's purchase but said it
would buy a 20% interest in Alstom to ensure what's left of the
company remains under French control. It isn't clear whether the
government will complete that transaction, now that Mr. Montebourg
has left the government.
Mr. Montebourg also amplified his criticisms of the government.
In July, he proposed a new road map, calling for supporting
household spending through fresh tax cuts.
"My responsibility is to propose new alternatives," Mr.
Montebourg said at the time.
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