Emmanuel Macron announced the upcoming implementation of “oversimplified procedures” to “halve the deadlines” for a new industrial establishment in France, in an interview published online this Wednesday by the weekly Challenges.
The Head of State, who this Thursday will announce his strategy to “accelerate” the “reindustrialization” of the country, intends to do so “in order to reinvest more in turnkey works, to promote the use of industrial wastelands, to also reconcile industrialization and the non-artificialization” of the soils.
“The priority of large investors, whether they are data centers, car factories or large battery factories, American, Asian or European, is speed. You can offer them billions in aid, if it takes you two years to investigate a procedure and they are cubic meters of paper, failure is guaranteed,” he said. “I call for an agenda to simplify and speed up our procedures, mobilizing all the actors involved in these decisions,” he added. “The key is simplicity and speed,” “especially against China and the United States.”
“Mother of Battles”
President Macron opens, with this interview and the meeting on Thursday at the Élysée Palace, a long economic sequence that is part of his attempt to relaunch his five-year term after the pension reform crisis. And for this, the reindustrialization of the country stands out, described as “the mother of battles” -after having addressed pensions, presented for a long time in Macronie as “the mother of all reforms”.
“Reindustrializing means creating purchasing power, financing our social model, building a future for our children, attracting innovation and talent from all sectors, reducing the foreign trade deficit.
And then, of course, stop the abandonment of this France of the territories”, advocated in challenges. “If we don’t win the battle for industrialization, we won’t be able to win the battle for full employment, return prospects and projects to the territories and therefore re-found our national unity,” he insisted.
“When you tax the capital, the capital… flees”
Emmanuel Macron boasts extensively about the results of his economic policy over the past six years: “Over six years, we have created 1.7 million jobs, with more than 300 net factory creations since 2017,” he said to worth. If this “dynamic” is maintained, “at the end of the five-year period we will have reached the shock of deindustrialization due to the 2008 crisis, recreating the greatest number of factories and jobs.”
“These results are the result of a coherent economic policy. We often hear: ‘Let’s reindustrialize the country, but we have to tax the rich!‘ But when the capital is taxed, the capital… is gone. This is French inconsistency! For decades, therefore, there has been inconsistency and cowardice. For six years, we have been trying to have a consistent policy. And results, ”he adds.
The Head of State states in passing that France was in 2022 “for the fourth consecutive year” the “first country in Europe in number of foreign investment decisions”. On Thursday he will have to specify his strategy and in particular the main lines of the “green industry” bill that will be presented to the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. He intends to decline aid that supposedly makes it possible to compete against the ambitious industrial policy of the United States.
It will then go to Dunkirk in the north for announcements about a new factory location for electric vehicle batteries. And on Monday it will host the sixth edition of the “Choose France” summit in Versailles to attract foreign investment.
“We should have explained the pension reform more”
In more general terms, Emmanuel Macron assumes that he wants to continue reforming “quickly and strongly”, as he did with pensions, although he considers “that we should have explained the need for this reform more”.
For him, “we cannot be the country that has the most generous social model, the largest current account deficits, a country that has deindustrialized and that chooses to be the country in which we work the least amount of time in Europe. in retirement and where fewer hours a year are worked, those who say otherwise deny reality, it is also their breeding ground.
Source: BFM TV
