President Emmanuel Macron and CEO of Eastman Chemical Mark Costa (d) during a meeting at the Elysee Palace, January 17, 2022 in Paris (POOL / Michel Euler)
By announcing 21 new foreign investments for a total of 4 billion euros, Emmanuel Macron and the government are multiplying on Monday to highlight the attractiveness of France less than three months before the presidential election.
Because of the health situation, the Head of State is not receiving foreign investors in Versailles this year for a “Choose France” summit, as has been the tradition since he came to power in 2017.
Instead, the executive deploys in the territories to carry the good word of a regained competitiveness. Starting with the Head of State, who is going to Chalampé in the Haut-Rhin on Monday afternoon to announce an investment of around 300 million euros from the German chemical group BASF.
At the same time, several ministers are commissioned across the country to announce other projects which represent more than 4 billion euros in total, and should lead to the creation of “more than 10,000 jobs”, according to the Elysée.
Infographic presenting the 25 French unicorns and their valuation (in billions of dollars) ( AFP / )
The largest of the projects announced is that of the American group Eastman, which specializes in the production of materials, which will inject 850 million euros into a plastics recycling plant employing 350 people, in a location yet to be defined.
Its CEO Mark Costa was received Monday morning at the Elysée. “The leaders of the American group Eastman confirm it to me: they choose France!”, Emmanuel Macron welcomed in a tweet after the meeting.
A server room at the computer hosting site of the American company Equinix, on February 18, 2019 in Pantin, near Paris (AFP / JACQUES DEMARTHON)
The American Equinix will open its 10th IT hosting site in June 2022 in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, “as part of an investment of 750 million euros over three years”, with 165 job creations at the key.
Several projects affect health: Pfizer will invest more than 520 million euros in an industrial subcontracting project with the contract manufacturer Novasep for the production of treatment against Covid-19 and investments in cutting-edge research. GSK will inject 118 million into it at three sites in France.
– “More than 10,000 jobs” –
These investment promises are “the result of a policy of reindustrialization”, insisted the Minister of Industry Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Monday on Twitter, when the Elysée Palace highlights “all the reforms that have been carried out since the beginning of the five-year term”, in tax matters in particular.
The German chemist BASF will invest around 300 million euros in the Chalampé site, in the Haut-Rhin (AFP / Daniel ROLAND)
The 21 new projects will create “more than 10,000 jobs, to which are added more than 16,000 temporary permanent jobs” from the Manpower company, indicated the Elysée, recalling that of the 57 projects announced during the four previous editions, 55 materialized for 8 billion euros, corresponding to 13,300 jobs.
The public aid granted to obtain these investments is generally between 5% and 10% of their amount, the same source said.
France was in 2019 and 2020 the first destination for foreign investment in Europe, according to the barometer of the firm EY, an element regularly put forward by Emmanuel Macron.
The government agency Business France has identified 5,300 foreign investments between 2017 and 2020, which have created or maintained 140,000 jobs.
Among the members of the government deployed on Monday, the Minister in charge of Attractiveness Franck Riester was to go to Saint-Denis-de-l’Hôtel in Loiret (center) where the American pet food manufacturer Mars Petcare wants to renovate existing equipment and build two new production lines for 85 million euros.
A production line of the American pet food manufacturer Mars Petcare in Saint-Denis-de-l’Hotel, in May 2015 ( AFP / GUILLAUME SOUVANT )
The Secretary of State for Ecological Transition Bérangère Abba was announced in Golbey in the Vosges (east) where the Norwegian Norske Skog will invest 250 million euros to convert a newsprint production line into 100% cardboard packaging. recycled.
For her part, the Minister of Public Service Amélie de Montchalin was to go to Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris to the Belgian X-Fab, which is putting 65 million euros on the table to relocate the manufacture of semiconductors for the automobile, in full shortage of these components. “These are 900 jobs in the department and nearly 120 million euros in turnover,” said the ministry.
Often, industrial projects do not directly create many sustainable jobs. Thus, the new BASF plant in Alsace will employ nearly 500 people for its construction, but around fifty permanent positions thereafter.
In services, on the other hand, the consulting firm Accenture wants to hire 2,000 people in France in 2022, and the Mexican Alsea, owner of the operating license for Starbucks coffees in France, plans 1,500 recruitments by 2026.
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