A prestigious engineering university in France was set to have a new center near its campus, led by none other than the prestigious luxury group LVMH. But, in a new blow for the president of the Ecole Polytechnique and the research university system Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IPP), Eric Labaye has failed to land LVMH. On Monday, January 23, the luxury goods group confirmed that it had abandoned its €100 million project to create a research laboratory on the Plateau de Saclay, also known as the European Silicon Valley, near the Ecole Polytechnique, a prestigious engineering school.
In a letter sent on January 13, the CEO of the luxury group Bernard Arnault informed Grégoire de Lasteyrie, the mayor of Palaiseau, and Philippe Van de Maele, Directeur Général de l’Etablissement Public d’Aménagement Paris-Saclay (EPA-PS, Director General of the Paris-Saclay Public Development Establishment), that his choice had fallen on another "piece of land located outside the Palaiseau-Saclay plateau and the perimeter of the EPA-PS." LVMH did not specify the address it had finally chosen.
Three months ago, on November 8, despite the opposition of the organization called La Polytechnique N'Est Pas à Vendre! (the Polytechnique is not for sale!), the institution's board of directors had given the green light to the purchase of land belonging to the EPA. The group, with a turnover of €64 billion euros, was to create a 22,500 square-meter research laboratory on the site.
Arnault promised that he wanted to employ 300 researchers there to work on "sustainable materials, data and artificial intelligence, as well as life sciences." Polytechnique N'Est Pas à Vendre! filed two appeals to overturn this decision before the Versailles administrative court in December 2022 and January 2023. LVMH stated that its reversal is not linked to the litigation. "We have found another site that fits in perfectly with our architectural and research project," said a spokesperson, without explaining the about-face.
Lack of consistency
The school's management has suffered another setback, almost exactly one year after being abandoned by TotalEnergies. In January 2022, after months of controversy, an unprecedented demonstration by Polytechnique students who are reputedly not very rebellious, and the Parquet National Financier's (National Financial Prosecutor's Office) opening of a preliminary investigation against Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of the oil group and a member of the Polytechnic's board of directors, for possible unlawful conflict of interest, TotalEnergies threw in the towel.
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