Antonio Filosa meets with unions to restore confidence among French teams

Antonio Filosa, the new CEO of Stellantis, met with the French teams a few months after his appointment. The meeting was intended to calm concerns that, with the departure of Tavares, the group's center of gravity had shifted to the United States, where investments of $13 billion over the next four years had been announced.

Antonio Filosa was keen to reiterate “France's central role” in the group. As Stellantis' second-largest market worldwide and its largest in Europe, France accounts for 15% of the group's global workforce, with 39,000 employees spread across 12 industrial sites, including 22% of R&D and 30% of the group's engineers. It is also the leading patent filer in France, with 1,289 filings registered last year. This year, around 650,000 cars are expected to be produced there, compared with 580,000 last year, according to union sources.

The CEO emphasized that France remains “the country in which Stellantis invests the most.” By 2025, the group will have spent more than €2 billion on capital expenditure and R&D, in line with previous years, including €3 billion on the electrification of its factories.

He also confirmed a plan to recruit 1,400 people in 2026, divided equally between blue-collar and white-collar workers, including 350 engineers in strategic fields. This plan follows 1,200 hires in 2025 (800 blue-collar and 400 white-collar workers), double the previous year's figure.

“This will rejuvenate our workforce, given that the average age in France is over 50,” said Jean-Paul Guy, CFTC union representative in Vesoul.

Regarding the Poissy site, where the Opel Mokka and DS3 Crossback are produced, Antonio Filosa assured that “no industrial sites would be closed.”

“The dialogue was lively and open, and the exchanges were rich and cordial,” said Laurent Oechsel, CFE-CGC Stellantis central union representative.

FO representatives in Poissy specified that an announcement would be made “at the end of November or by the end of 2025 at the latest” on the next steps in the industrial plan, while the site is expected to produce its current models until 2028.

Antonio Filosa also outlined to the unions the investment decisions taken in the United States and explained that those concerning Europe were “pending ongoing negotiations with the European institutions.”

An advocate of relaxing CO2 regulations, he said he was aligned with the position of the ACEA, which is calling for “more realistic and technologically neutral decarbonization.”

According to Laurent Oechsel, “Filosa came to gauge whether the unions were in line with the request to renegotiate the European regulation.” Three French unions (CFE-CGC, FO, and CFTC) support this position, as do their Spanish, Italian, and German counterparts, unlike the CFDT, which maintains its support for the 2035 target of 100% electric vehicles.

Antonio Filosa explained to the unions that the level of employment would depend on the speed of adoption of electric vehicles: the faster sales of electric vehicles grow, the lower the staffing requirements will be compared to a scenario where hybrids remain dominant.

“We are going to load up the factories in Europe: the more we load them, the more competitive we will be,” he said.

This approach differs from that of his predecessor, Carlos Tavares, whose performance was measured primarily by unit margin. Filosa advocates an industrial logic where competitiveness also depends on volume and differentiation.

When asked whether there might be too many brands in the Stellantis portfolio, he replied that “that's not the issue,” but felt that the differentiation between them needed to be strengthened and that, by using the same components, the cars looked too similar.