Mr Lassalle began his fast in March, sitting almost daily on a sofa in an ornate room of the National Assembly in Paris, to protest against what he considered to be a relocation plan by Toyal, a Japanese-owned manufacturer of aluminium pigment.
As Mr Lassalle was hospitalised in an emergency, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, signed an agreement with Toyal: the Japanese firm would expand within Mr Lassalle's Aspe Valley after all, and the French government vowed to compensate it for any extra costs that might be involved in abandoning the site at Lacq.