ProLogium officials said President Emmanuel Macron’s lobbying, deal sweeteners, and competitive power rates won ProLogium’s first overseas vehicle battery plant over Germany and the Netherlands.

ProLogium chose Dunkirk, France, for its second gigafactory and first outside Taiwan this week after limiting a list of 13 countries to three.

The factory will become northern France’s fourth battery plant in 2026, joining a growing electric car cluster.

Europe relies on Asian batteries for electric cars, and politicians are proposing incentives to boost the industry.

Since the US passed its $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act last year, which contains large tax subsidies to limit carbon emissions and increase domestic production and manufacturing, that has become more critical.

Macron, who personally visited ProLogium CEO Vincent Yang at the outset of the screening process, was scheduled to unveil the 5.2 billion euro ($5.7 billion) investment in Dunkirk on Friday.

Gilles Normand, ProLogium’s executive vice-president, said that after Macron, a former investment banker, pitched Yang over a year ago, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire followed up and backed the company’s case with the European Commission for EU financial incentives.

“There was then the realisation that there might be some interesting possibilities, which was maybe a little bit different from the clichés about France,” Normand told a small gathering of journalists.

Macron aims to move past months of strikes and protests over his plans to raise the retirement age to 64 and persuade skeptical voters that his pro-business agenda is working.

After years of industrial decline, ProLogium anticipates the project to create 3,000 direct jobs and four times as many indirect jobs.

Normand said a critical mass of material suppliers and skilled people near the three battery factories under construction was a draw.

France’s competitively priced zero-carbon electricity, produced by one of the world’s largest nuclear fleets and increasingly by offshore wind farms and solar, also helped.

Normand noted that the government offered incentives, but he could not provide details while the European Commission reviewed future subsidies.

Macron’s government wants to leverage the latest EU state aid loosening to offer green technology investors tax rebates and other subsidies.

On Thursday, he offered a 40% tax credit for wind, solar, heat-pump, and battery projects.

The government also offers a 5,000 euro cash incentive to European electric automobiles that meet strict low-carbon production standards, thereby cutting out non-European cars.