“Now they had to talk,” recalled Jean Vranken, regional head of the ACV union that represents Ford workers in Genk.

Ford is one of the few companies to brave the fierce resistance of politicians and Europe’s powerful unions as it tries to emulate the brutal downsizing that carmakers in the United States have done — and that subsequently helped make possible the rebound now under way in the American car market.

But in Genk, a year after the announcement, the measure of calm that has returned has come at a high price for the company, its workers and the community. To be sure, Ford has succeeded in reaching a labor settlement that will allow it to close the factory, as scheduled, at the end of next year. The closure of Genk and two smaller factories in Britain will cut Ford’s capacity in Europe by 18 percent and, the company says, make it possible to return to profitability in Europe, compared with losses this year that have already reached $1 billion.

But the accord came only after a long, bitter struggle that cost Ford $750 million merely to settle with about 4,000 blue-collar workers in Genk, or about $190,000 per worker. And the total cost of Ford’s European overhaul is likely to end up much higher because of additional payments to white-collar workers in Genk and the expense of closing plants in Southampton and Dagenham in England. Ford has estimated the severance costs for all three plants at $1 billion.

That cost of layoffs is substantially higher than in the United States, where Ford set aside $374 million in 2009 to cover severance costs for 2,400 workers, or about $155,000 each. Moreover, European labor law is much more favorable to unions than in the United States and tends to support workers in their tradition of militancy. In Genk, workers prevented the plant from operating normally for more than four months and received unemployment benefits for some of the time they did so.