Three months before the presidential election, Macron announces a new harvest of foreign investments – Bourse Direct

More than 4 billion euros in cumulative investments: the presidency announced 21 new foreign investments in France, which allow Emmanuel Macron to highlight his policy in the service of the country’s attractiveness three months before the presidential election .

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 will be received at the Elysée by the President of the Republic, his services indicated.

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.

The German chemist BASF will spend around 300 million on the Chalampé site (Haut-Rhin, east), where Emmanuel Macron is going on Monday with the Minister of Industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

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.

These investment promises are “the result of a reindustrialization policy”, enthused Ms. Pannier-Runacher on Twitter on Monday, when the Elysée Palace highlights “all the reforms that have been carried out since the start of the five-year term. “, in tax matters in particular.

These announcements are part of the fifth edition of “Choose France”, an event for which CEOs of multinationals are usually invited to the Palace of Versailles but whose face-to-face meeting was canceled this year due to the pandemic.

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.

Choose France highlights a fraction of foreign investment in France, but the government agency Business France has identified 5,300 between 2017 and 2020, which have created or maintained 140,000 jobs.

Ministers mobilized

With the approach of the presidential election, six other members of the government are expected on Monday at sites hosting some of these new investments.

Among them, the Minister in charge of Attractiveness Franck Riester must go to Saint-Denis-de-l’Hôtel in Loiret (center) where the American manufacturer of pet food Mars Petcare wants to renovate existing equipment and build two new production lines for 85 million euros.

“A country, territories, know-how: this is why foreign investors choose France”, he rejoiced in a tweet.

The Secretary of State for Ecological Transition Bérangère Abba has been 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% packaging cardboard. recycled.

For her part, the Minister of Public Service Amélie de Montchalin will be in Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris with 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.

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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