Public support for the post-mining reconversion of the Bassin minier du Nord-Pas-de-Calais reached its 70th anniversary last year, marking a significant milestone in one of Europe’s longest-running territorial reconversion processes. Despite decades of sustained public intervention, the overall assessment of this process remains mixed, as this territory continues to show structural urban decline dynamics. These enduring challenges highlight the limits of past redevelopment strategies and call into question the long-term effectiveness of the way the reconversion process of this territory is conceived. At the same time, the recent proliferation of decarbonization initiatives— among which the development of the French electric vehicle ecosystem— brings hope for a new epoch of redevelopment for the territory. However, whether these initiatives can genuinely transform the region (bifurcation) or merely reproduce earlier patterns (path-dependence) remains an open question. This article addresses this issue by examining the three previous “modèles de relance” implemented in the area. By resonating their contextual "fabric", it highlights the persistence of a stable political framework and a largely unchanged operational logic underpinning post-mining reconversion policies. In particular, it shows how successive strategies have contributed to the formation of an unquestioned paradigm of public action, within the Bassin minier, which results in the systematic importation of public policy approaches that are ill-adapted to the territory’s specific challenges (operational anachorism). This mismatch helps explain the limited effectiveness of redevelopment efforts and raises critical questions about the capacity of public actors to articulate, in the coming years, territorial and ecological transitions in a coherent and place-sensitive manner. Ultimately, it suggests that overcoming the region’s “endless reconversion” will require a profound rethinking of the underlying frameworks guiding public intervention.