(Chalampé) By announcing 21 new foreign investments for a total of 4 billion euros, Emmanuel Macron and the government are multiplying on Monday to highlight the attractiveness of France and praise the reforms of the five-year term 83 days before the election. presidential.
Posted at 11:27
Because of the health situation, the Head of State is not receiving foreign investors in Versailles this year for a “Choose France” summit, as has been the tradition since he came to power in 2017.
Instead, the executive deploys in the territories to carry the good word of a regained competitiveness. Starting with the Head of State, who came to announce in Chalampé, in eastern France, an investment of some 300 million euros from the German chemical group BASF.
In front of several dozen workers, he took the opportunity to defend his reforms at the start of his five-year term – work orders, lower taxes on businesses and on financial investments – as well as that of unemployment insurance, which he believes explain a rebound. foreign industrial investments in France.
“Produce more”
And he again pleaded for “producing more”, “the only way for our economies to make a climate transition” and “maintaining our social model”. “We must stop opposing climate transition and industry and job creation,” he insisted.
At the same time, several ministers have been commissioned across the country to announce other projects which represent more than 4 billion euros in total, and should make it possible to create “more than 10,000 jobs”, according to the Élysée.
The most important is that of the American group Eastman, which will inject 850 million euros into a plastics recycling plant employing 350 people, in a location yet to be defined.
“The leaders of the American group Eastman confirm it to me: they choose France! “welcomed Emmanuel Macron in a tweet, after receiving his CEO Mark Costa Monday morning at the Élysée.
At dawn, the Head of State had hailed the birth of a 25and French “unicorn”, these start-ups valued at more than a billion dollars, – the robot manufacturer Exotec -, by announcing “a new objective of ten tech giants by 2030 at European level”.
Several projects also affect health: Pfizer will invest more than 520 million euros in an industrial subcontracting project with the contract manufacturer Novasep for the production of a treatment against COVID-19 and investments in cutting-edge research .
“It does not fall from the sky”
The 21 new projects will create “more than 10,000 jobs, to which are added more than 16,000 temporary permanent jobs” from the Manpower company, indicated the Elysée, recalling that of the 57 projects announced during the four previous editions , 55 have materialized for 8 billion euros and 13,300 jobs.
The public aid granted to obtain these investments is generally between 5% and 10% of the amount, the same source said.
France was in 2019 and 2020 the first destination for foreign investment in Europe, according to the barometer of the firm EY.
The image of France “has radically changed thanks to the policy conducted. It does not fall from the sky, ”insisted the Minister in charge of Attractiveness, Franck Riester.
“Everything that has been done since 2017 on administrative simplification, investment in talent, innovation and research contributes to a transformation of the country to make it more competitive,” added the minister, who visited Monday in the Loiret the Mars Petcare factory. This group wants to build two new food production lines for dogs and cats, for 85 million euros and 70 additional jobs at stake.
The Secretary of State for Ecological Transition Bérangère Abba was announced in Golbey, in the Vosges, where the Norwegian Norske Skog will invest 250 million euros.
For her part, the Minister of Public Service Amélie de Montchalin was to go to Corbeil-Essonnes, south of Paris, to the Belgian X-Fab, which is injecting 65 million euros to relocate the manufacture of semiconductors for the car.
Often, industrial projects do not directly create many sustainable jobs. Thus, the new BASF plant in Alsace will employ nearly 500 people for its construction, but around fifty permanent positions thereafter.
In services, on the other hand, the consulting firm Accenture wants to hire 2,000 people in France in 2022, and the Mexican Alsea, owner of the Starbucks coffee operating license in France, plans 1,500 recruitments by 2026. .