French supplier, Plastic Omnium, said it welcomes regulation that encourages investment opportunity, but also highlights how its home market has a plethora of industrial relations regulations.
“The English [British] working laws book is 90 pages – the French [one] is 3,387 pages,” Plastic Omnium chairman and CEO, Laurent Burelle, told just-auto on the sidelines of today’s (12 June) Automotive News Europe Congress in Paris.
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Referring to discussions between the French government and employers, Burelle noted they were helping working conditions but: “The stiffness of the working laws are still too high to promote investment in France.
“It has to be liberalised a lot more.”
The component CEO outlined how increasing use of plastics in vehicles would see up to 25% of a car’s content using the material in a few years for elements such as door panels, while carbon fibre would also feature more heavily.
“Regulation can be an opportunity – Plastic Omnium has the opportunity to develop quickly its investment in the lightweight business for cars,” said Burelle. “Regulation targets set by the US and European Commission are quite a nice opportunity for us.
“We welcome reasonable regulations. It will be a bad effect if one continent is over-regulated and as a Frenchman, I know what over-regulation means. It is our job to make regulation affordable to customers.”
Burelle also highlighted how Plastic Omnium was reacting to challenging economic conditions by closing some plants in Europe, but opening others in China, South America, India, Russia, Mexico, the US and Brazil.
