2023-05-14 18:58:00
Emmanuel Macron spares no effort to woo foreign bosses. After his trip last Friday to Dunkirk on the site of the Prologium factory, the Head of State is preparing to roll out the red carpet to more than 200 foreign and French leaders in the prestigious enclosure of the Palace of Versailles this Monday 15 may. “It has become an unmissable event for many investors. The number of announcements and the volume of investments has increased over the years », assures the entourage of the president. Emmanuel Macron must meet with the leaders of the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer or those of Arcellor Mittal.
For the Head of State, this grand reception at the castle of the Sun King is once once more an opportunity to boast regarding his record, as he did during the meeting last Thursday at the Elysée devoted to reindustrialization in the presence of an audience of ministers, leaders and local elected officials. At the Elysée and at Matignon, the Head of State’s teams, under pressure, have been working on this sumptuous reception for months.
Behind this vast communication operation, Emmanuel Macron absolutely wants to turn the page on the pension reform marked by major mobilizations throughout the territory and concerts of saucepans during travel. For the advisers of the Elysée, this sequence “should allow leaders to better consider France”. Between the presentation of the pension reform in January, the decision to use article 49-3 and its promulgation in April, the foreign press did not fail to point out the “impasse” of the government. It is also a question of reassuring business circles sometimes worried regarding the social situation in France following an electric spring.
28 ads for “a record amount”
The large companies present at the Palace of Versailles must announce a rain of investments: 28 projects totaling 13 billion euros and 8,000 jobs created. Among the major sectors, health should occupy a prominent place with an envelope of “nearly a billion euros”. The American health juggernaut Pfizer is to announce an investment of 500 million euros “for production, clinical trials and research and development”.
The British GFK specialized in drugs should communicate an investment of 400 million euros. Specializing in furniture and household equipment, the Swedish Ikea is preparing to invest 900 million euros on French soil. In mobility, Ivecco, an Italian manufacturer of large vehicles, should put 115 million euros on the table for a site in Ardèche and another in Saône-et-Loire. Asked regarding the public support given to all these investments, the Elysée Palace kicked into touch. “On all Choose France projects, we do not specify the extent of public support […] The amounts vary according to the size of the project and the nature of the companies”, we explain. However, some of these decisions depend largely on subsidies and aid granted by the State and local authorities.
Industry still struggling
The government keeps repeating that France is “re-industrialize”. “We are on the way to reindustrialisation”, insisted the head of state’s advisers during a recent telephone meeting with journalists. They explained that this reindustrialization is “accelerating on our territory” and Emmanuel Macron did not fail to let it be known. During his nearly hour-long speech at the Elysée on Thursday, the Head of State used the terms “accelerate” or “acceleration” 57 times.
However, the Planning Commissioner François Bayrou, present at the reception organized at the Elysée Palace, commented on a particularly alarming note on the state of the French trade balance, the day before during a press briefing. “The situation of French foreign trade, both a symptom and a driving force of deindustrialisation, continues to deteriorate”explained the authors rating.
In addition, official statistics figures describe a less favorable reality. The share of industry in the tricolor gross domestic product has continued to plummet from 27.7% in 1949 to 13.1% at the end of 2021, according to INSEE. And under Macron’s first five-year term, industry has further lost ground in the total wealth produced by the French economy (-1 point of GDP between the end of 2016 and the end of 2021).
Industrial employment has not returned to its pre-health crisis level
On the employment front, the balance between the destruction and the creation of jobs is largely positive in 2021 at 37,000 but it is still far from having returned to its pre-health crisis level. In 2020, more than 50,000 jobs were destroyed during the peak of the pandemic. In other words, the French economy primarily creates employment in services. Above all, the recent creations are very far from compensating for the 2 million industrial jobs that have disappeared for 40 years in France.
In a very documented report, the parliamentary commission of inquiry had drawn up a particularly worrying picture of French industry in the spring of 2022. Since then, the situation of the industrial fabric has not recovered. The war in Ukraine and soaring energy prices forced many industries to slow down. And the economic outlook is far from encouraging. Most institutes have downgraded their growth forecasts for 2023.
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