The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire spoke on Thursday of the “political issue” of simplification, in France and in the EU, emphasizing that the excess of standards ended up “feeding the extremes in Europe”, and pleading for “transform the scrub into a garden”.
“I am going to make a severe diagnosis of the European economic situation,” launched Mr. Le Maire at the start of a press conference devoted to the presentation by five parliamentarians of a report whose proposals will feed into the next bill on simplification, by summer.
He noted a European growth rate “much lower” than that of the United States, and the fact that many European states were revising their growth. He confirmed that he would have to do the same “in the coming days”, while the government forecast of 1.4% GDP growth in 2024 now seems unattainable to economists.
“One of the fundamental reasons for this lack of growth is the excess of standards (…) which fuels the anger of entrepreneurs, farmers, and therefore fuels the extremes in Europe,” launched Mr. Le Maire.
For him, we must “debureaucratize European growth”, to regain growth, but also because “the evil is deeper”, with “a moral impact on the minds of entrepreneurs”.
For the minister, we need “a revolution of minds”, and “transform the maquis [des normes] in the garden. A garden, he continued, where “we prune within the standards, and the business of the standard, where we take care of the administrative relationship [avec les usagers]where we develop companies so that they gain in size and power.”
Mr. Le Maire specified that there would soon be three separate legislative texts, the bill on simplification, a text on regulated professions and another on the attractiveness of the Paris financial center.
He was particularly favorable to two of the 14 proposals contained in the parliamentary report, the “tell us once and for all” rule, where entrepreneurs are not asked several times to provide administrative documents, and the reduction of the obligations attached to the three main thresholds of company employees (11-50-250 employees) by translating them by one level.