The French press is calling it "Economic Patriotism", redux.

France has announced it’s buying a small stake in a French shipbuilding group from a South Korean company called STX.

It’s all part of a complex deal aimed at forestalling the flight of French naval jobs, military expertise and technology to the Asians.

The shipbuilder in question is not just anyone, but the former Chantiers de l’Atlantique, a maritime icon that brought the world the Queen Mary II luxury liner, and brought France the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.

Its main shipyard at Saint-Nazaire on France’s western coast employs around 3,000 workers, and some 1,000 additional subcontractors.

The Chantiers’ ownership has been gradually slipping from France's grasp in recent years as sizeable blocks of shares have passed into foreign hands.

Sarkozy sees it as imperative for France to reclaim some of that lost control in the name of promoting an “active industrial policy”.

But that’s really a euphemism for “economic patriotism”, a term popularized by Sarkozy’s political nemesis, the former prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.

Think of it as American country singer Tammy Wynette’s plea to “Stand By Your Man”, applied to a French interventionist sensibility. All you need to do is drop the word “man” and replace it with “domestic industry”, and you have an apt summation of Sarkozy’s stance.

When it comes to fending off foreign predators against perceived assaults on national champions, Sarkozy’s a recidivist.

We first saw him in the trenches when he saved engineering group Alstom from a hostile advance by Germany’s Siemens back in 2004. He was finance minister at the time. (Sarkozy recapitalized Alstom to the tune of 800 million euros, and then resold the state’s shares in the company two years later to telecom firm Bouygues for $1.2 billion!)

That aggressive defense came on the heels of chemical firm Pechiney’s buyout by Canada’s Alcan in 2003 – a takeover that Sarkozy saw as a humiliating abdication of a French industrial icon.

The saga surrounding Chantiers de l’Atlantique began getting complicated back in January 2006. That's when a Norwegian group, Aker Yards, bought a 75% stake in the Chantiers from French engineering group Alstom, which kept the other 25% for itself.

France intends to buy back Alstom's quarter stake by 2010. But that still leaves it short of a blocking minority stake that would allow it to wield its influence over boardroom governance. And this is where the South Korean firm, STX, comes into play.

Last October, STX bought a nearly 40% stake in the Chantiers, from Aker. France has now struck a deal with STX to buy 9% of that stake. Together with the prospective Alstom holding, that would give France the critical mass of votes it needs to safeguard Chantiers from outside infringement.

You might ask how all this flies with the EU antitrust authorities in Brussels? They are always on the lookout for anyone trying to drive a wedge into cross-border competition.

So far, they seem to be on board. This is partly because France has played its cards safely – invoking the need to protect its strategic interests. France's Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, told the Ouest-France daily that the transaction is a simple investment decision and not a matter of the state granting aid to a national company. She says there's therefore no reason Brussels - which has followed the whole transaction closely - should oppose it.

But there could be speed bumps ahead. The Norwegian group, Aker, says it learned about Sarkozy's deal with the South Koreans in the newspapers.

And the whole affair also raises broader questions about France's commitment to greater economic openness.