ArcelorMittal plant under nationalisation threat

French President Francois Hollande is threatening to nationalise a plant owned by steelmaker ArcelorMittal in an increasingly heated dispute in which ministers say the multinational is no longer welcome in the country.

Moments before talks with tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Hollande said that nationalising ArcelorMittal's plant in northeastern France remained on the table.

"The nationalisation is part of the subjects of the discussion," Hollande said. "I will meet in a few minutes with Mr Mittal to see what answer he can give us in respect to this requirement for us to keep the site as it is today."

The warning came as 40 legislators from Hollande's Socialist party said they were in favour of temporarily nationalising ArcelorMittal's plant in Florange.

"Mittal does not respect our country," a joint statement by the parliamentarians said, adding that his interests "were clearly not that of France, of its industrial fabric and its workers".

Mittal, who ranks 21st on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, is locked in a battle with France over the future of the Florange site in the heartland of the French steel industry in the eastern Lorraine region.

Hollande's government has made a priority of protecting jobs while reviving the economy.

ArcelorMittal has said that two blast furnaces at Florange, which were slowed for 14 months prior to full closure, were uncompetitive in a tough trading climate, partly because they were too far from ports for transport.

The company gave the government two months, which expires on Saturday, to find a buyer. The government says it has two offers, but only for the entire Florange site including other facilities which ArcelorMittal wants to retain and keep operating.

ArcelorMittal has refused to sell the full operation and warned that nationalisation of the Florange facilities would threaten the viability of all of its activities across France, where it employs 20,000 people.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, meanwhile, tried to limit the damage to investor perceptions after the minister for industrial renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, threatened to nationalise Florange and said ArcelorMittal was no longer welcome in France.

"Everyone can understand that this case is a special one. We, of course, welcome investors on our soil," Moscovici said, stressing that only a temporary nationalisation had been envisaged.

Montebourg, who is suggesting that the state nationalise Florange to allow it to pass the entire site on to a buyer, raised the stakes on Monday, saying France did not want ArcelorMittal in the country any more and was looking for a partner to take over the group's operations at the plant.

"We do not want Mittal in France any longer because they do not respect France," Montebourg told the French financial daily Les Echos. "Mittal's lies since 2006 are damning."

But Montebourg later tempered his comments, saying he meant he did not want Mittal's methods in France, accusing it of "non-respect of its commitments, blackmail and threats".