France, the new El Dorado for bosses? Beneath the gold of the Palace of Versailles, on the occasion of Monday’s Choose France summit, there were many glowing comments from foreign leaders who noted that France had shed its investor-repelling label.
“Before coming to France I had some stereotypes,” admitted to journalists Taavi Madiberk, Estonian co-founder of the company Skeleton Technologies, which has just announced investments of 600 million euros to develop new generation batteries in the Occitania region.
“I saw France as a place where procedures would take a long time, where bureaucracy would be excessive,” he continued, invited to the seventh edition of the Choose France summit.
“It is a pro-business country”
This summit, which has become an annual meeting since Emmanuel Macron came to power, brings together between 100 and 200 foreign leaders each spring, with the stated objective of showing these businessmen a shift in France towards a supply policy aimed at the companies.
The government is proud to have made their lives easier over the past seven years through a reduction in the corporate tax rate, the elimination of certain taxes and a more flexible labor market, contrary to the image generally transmitted from country to country fiscal. instability and social rigidity.
“It has an attractive tax system, it is a pro-business country,” Denis Machuel, director of the Swiss group Adecco, a company that generates a quarter of its turnover in France, admitted on Monday in the corridors of the Palace of Versailles. and has just announced the hiring of 3,000 people with permanent contracts and 8,000 with temporary permanent contracts.
However, the reforms are not the only factor, he added, highlighting “a quality of talent” in the territory recognized in the latest EY barometer that placed France in first place among European countries in terms of the number of investment projects. abroad in 2023.
Bureaucratic relaxation
“France is trying to show as much as possible that it is pro-business,” the head of the Bolt company, Markus Villig, also analyzed on Monday, recalling an environment that has been strongly obscured in the last ten years in terms of regulation and bureaucracy, only being more flexible in recent years. five years.
“There have been a number of changes, the policy has become investment-friendly,” Kunal Bajaj, director of Indian aerospace company Motherson Aerospace, also said. India, a country that France especially wants to seduce and for which a round table was specifically organized on Monday in Versailles.
“We tell our peers that it has been a fantastic journey,” he continued, after announcing an investment of 150 million euros in France.
Source: BFM TV
