The collapse of the French Shipyard of Dunkirk and EEC state-aid control (1977–86).

Since 1958 the European Commission has been in charge of monitoring a progressive reduction of national aid to shipbuilding. However, a large gap existed between theory and practice, especially during the severe crisis that hit Western European shipbuilding from the late 1970s onwards. This article gauges the real influence of state-aid control on companies' restructuring by examining both the Commission's papers and the archives of the French shipyard of Dunkirk, which was the second French shipbuilding company in the early 1980s before collapsing in 1986. It argues that the closure of the yard was due to a progressive assertion of European Economic Community (EEC) state-aid control, but also to the company's internal weakness as well as changes in the French state's industrial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]