Thursday, the Head of State must make a series of announcements on reindustrialization. The beginning of a sequence of several days dedicated to foreign investments. Jean-Rémi Baudot’s political brief
For the Élysée, there is an urgency to speak to the business world again after this pension crisis to try to send a simple message: in France, everything is fine. Several communication steps for this. From Wednesday evening, publication of an economic interview with the President in the magazine Challenges. The next day: presentation of the reindustrialization strategy with, according to our information, shorter deadlines for future factories.
Friday, precisely, trip to Dunkirk for the expected formalization of the gigantic electric battery factory of a Taiwanese group. And finally on Monday, in Versailles, the now traditional “Choose France”, where Emmanuel Macron will receive 200 international bosses…
>> Football: French clubs are attracting more and more foreign investors
Reassure investors and promote France’s strengths
The Elysée thus wants to show that the social climate does not weigh on business. The President’s main economic advisers insist: “France’s competitiveness is no longer in question (…), investors see our ability to make reforms (…). We benefit from great political and fiscal stability”. Coué method or voluntarism, to listen to the Elysée, the episode of the retreats would be a distant memory. A story obviously far from the concerns expressed by the Fitch agency when it recently downgraded the rating of the French debt.
The reality is that for the moment, the absence of a majority in parliament and the tensions in the street are not tarnishing either Emmanuel Macron’s economic record or our attractiveness. There is no real impact on GDP. At the Élysée, we even brag, recalling that there have never been so many foreign investment announcements as after the “Yellow Vests”.
Ever-increasing discrepancy
On Monday, at his “Choose France” event, Emmanuel Macron should thus reap a new harvest of foreign investment. The Élysée does not give figures, but predicts a record: this means more than the 11 billion euros announced last year. But what reaction to these figures? In the current debate, how will the images of the President be perceived, under the gilding of Versailles, surrounded by a skewer of big bosses?
For four years, Emmanuel Macron has not changed his method, but he has also not succeeded in imposing the idea that this substantive work to bring in investors and factories, these installation aids… ultimately, all of this is good for employment, tax revenue, our social model, and so on. It is clear that foreign investment and the drop in unemployment do not prevent anger from rising in the country. Rightly or wrongly, some French people continue to feel far from progress and growth…