French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the inauguration ceremony of the TANGRAM training and innovation center in Marseille, southern France, on May 8, 2024 (POOL/AFP/Ludovic MARIN)
Emmanuel Macron brings together around 180 foreign bosses at the “Choose France” summit on Monday who will take advantage of the Versailles showcase to announce the construction or expansion of factories, or other investments in France for more than 15 billion euros in total, an amount “ record” illustrating the ongoing reindustrialization, according to the government.
Headlining is Microsoft’s announcement of 4 billion euros of investment for a new data center in eastern France and the expansion of others in the Paris region and near Marseille, to respond to the growing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing services.
“This is the most important investment we have ever made” in France, its president Brad Smith told AFP.
One month before the European elections, the executive is promoting a France in good economic health and once again attractive to multinationals, even though its largest company in terms of turnover, TotalEnergies, plans to move to the New York Stock Exchange for its main quote.
The Ministry of Finance at the Pont de Bercy in Paris, June 5, 2023 (AFP/Archives/-)
The Elysée wants as proof the latest EY barometer, which crowned France the European champion of attractiveness for the fifth year in a row, with nearly 1,200 announcements of foreign investments in 2023.
Another reason for hope for the presidency, the 0.2% economic growth in the first quarter, better than expected.
Enough to chase away criticism of French economic policy after the surprise surge in the public deficit?
The presidency has in any case revealed the “record” number of 56 projects for 15 billion euros, after the 28 announcements and 13 billion for the 2023 edition (these investments generally spread over several years).
Many announcements will concern expansions or modernizations of factories, for example at the Canadian French fries giant McCain. Investment is part of the life of companies: they invest more than 200 billion euros in France each year, according to INSEE, including 35 coming from foreign multinationals.
“Most of the projects announced at the summit are projects that would have seen the light of day with or without the summit,” estimates Sylvain Bersinger, chief economist at the Asterès firm. “The heart of French attractiveness does not lie there,” he told AFP, citing instead the education system, the “legal, fiscal framework, the innovation environment, the local market (.. .)”.
– Debate on jobs –
In addition to Microsoft, investment projects made public include:
– a potential new low-carbon fertilizer factory in the Somme (FertigHy, 1.3 billion euros);
The American e-commerce giant Amazon will invest more than 1.2 billion euros in France in its logistics and web infrastructure (AFP/Archives/SEBASTIEN BOZON)
– investments by Amazon to develop its cloud infrastructures in the Paris region and its logistics infrastructure in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (1.2 billion);
– production lines for McCain fries and potatoes modernized or enlarged (350 million) in Pas-de-Calais and Marne, where Emmanuel Macron will visit Monday morning;
– a nickel refining plant near Bordeaux for 2027 (Swiss company KL1, 300 million);
– a manufacturing plant for a “regional electric aircraft” in New Aquitaine (German company Ilium, 400 million);
– additional investments in pharmacy with Pfizer (500 million over five years), AstraZeneca (388 million dollars) and GSK (140 million euros).
Among the expected bosses are those of the banks JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs or Bank of America, the Novartis and AstraZeneca laboratories or the Saudi or Qatari sovereign funds (AFP/Jonathan NACKSTRAND)
Some investments have already been validated, others will only be validated in several years.
Among the expected bosses are those of the banks JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs or Bank of America, the Novartis and AstraZeneca laboratories or the Saudi or Qatari sovereign funds.
Since the first edition of Choose France in 2018, more than 31 billion euros of investments for 122 projects have been announced, according to the Elysée.
The impact on employment of this harvest of investments, beyond the announcements made each year at Versailles, remains debated.
The EY barometer “informs us that foreign investment projects in France are associated with 39,773 job creations” in 2023, noted economist Lucas Chancel in an article in Le Monde. That is less than in the United Kingdom (52,211) or Spain (42,450).
These jobs, which represent 0.13% of the active population, “will help the territories which will benefit from them, but it is clear that the figure remains very low compared to the importance that some would like to attribute to it”, continues the co-director of the Laboratory on global inequalities at the Paris School of Economics.
© 2024 AFP
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