French industry minister assails Brussels on state aid for industry France's outspoken industry minister has launched a blistering attack on EU rules that restrict state aid to the sector, calling them obsolete and fundamentalist. Arnaud Montebourg aimed his fire chiefly at Joaquín Almunia, European competition commissioner, saying his strict application of controls on state subsidies was preventing Europe from meeting mounting global competition. "While our global industrial competitors get billions in subsidies, our bureaucracy is led by political leaders - Mr Almunia is a political leader - who have not understood that the world has changed," Mr Montebourg said. It is like Rome surrounded by the barbarians. We all await the fall of Rome. It's not funny. In a meeting with the Financial Times and a small number of other reporters in Paris, Mr Montebourg said the time had come to speak out as France and a large group of fellow EU members, including Germany and the UK, had so far "received nothing" in response to calls for a revision of EU controls on state aid. Citing a rule that requires all state subsidies above €200,000 to be notified to the commission, he said: "This is obsoletism, autism, imprisonment, fundamentalism." Mr Montebourg's outburst came as Mr Hollande has outlined a shift to a more business-friendly policy of tax and spending cuts - but the minister's stance on state support for industry is in line with French political tradition and broadly supported by his government colleagues. Mr Montebourg, the most prominent leftist in President François Hollande's socialist government, is a longstanding critic of what he says is the EU's failure to protect industry from unfair competition. He is championing a drive to regenerate French industry under the banner "Made in France," including through direct state investment in companies from start-ups to ailing industrial giants. The state is on the brink of taking a big stake in PSA Peugeot Citroën, the struggling carmaker, alongside the Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng, for which it will have to seek approval from Brussels. In a letter to Mr Almunia earlier this month, which Mr Montebourg made public on Wednesday, the minister said "unfair globalisation . . . justifies an innovative and revised interpretation by you and your office" of rules which he said had been "invented" by the commission, not decreed by EU treaties. He said the US, China and Japan, the biggest competitors to Europe, were pouring billions of dollars into helping their industries in the race to compete in new technologies. Meanwhile, the competition commission hindered aid to European companies and prevented them from merging to create "European champions." This is how the commission is working to weaken our industry. Do you sincerely believe that this is reasonable? Mr Montebourg wrote in his letter to Mr Almunia. He is lobbying for "reciprocity" with rules applied by the EU's major competitors. In an earlier letter from Mr Almunia, also released by Mr Montebourg, the commissioner complained of what he called the caricature of Brussels" stance portrayed by the minister and said he awaited "constructive proposals" from France for the modernisation of state aid rules. Mr Almunia fired back in kind on Wednesday, suggesting Mr Montebourg was out of line with President Hollande's shift to a pro-business policy. "Some politicians still fail to understand that the European economy cannot be reinvigorated in a defensive way, through protectionism or nationalism," he said. It seems that the opinions expressed by Mr Montebourg are very different from that of many of his colleagues. Besides, President Hollande with his supply-side approach has clearly chosen a proactive strategy. He added: "Europe will not find its place in globalisation by launching a subsidy race with the rest of the world. Last June, Mr Montebourg labelled José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, "the fuel" of the far-right National Front and said Brussels "does not respond to any popular aspirations in the areas of industry, the economy and budgets." He also has a record of public spats with leading industrialists, including the Peugeot family and Maurice Taylor, chief executive of Titan International, the US tyremaker. In 2012, he attacked Lakshmi Mittal, the steel magnate, over ArcelorMittal's moves to close blast furnaces in France - but the two men have since taken up similar positions over the need for a European industrial policy.