The reindustrialization of France remains “the mother of battles”, defends Emmanuel Macron

2023-05-10 20:52:41

“The key is simplicity and speed. Emmanuel Macron is due to unveil his strategy on Thursday to “accelerate” the “reindustrialization” of the country. In an interview for the weekly Challengesthe president unveiled the main lines of his project with a flagship measure of “hypersimplified procedures” to “halve the time” for a new industrial establishment in France.

The Head of State intends to “reinvest more in turnkey sites, strengthen the use of industrial wastelands, in order also to reconcile industrialization and non-artificialization” of soils. “The priority of large investors, whether it’s data centers, car factories or large battery factories, Americans, Asians or Europeans, is speed. You can offer them billions in aid, if you take two years to investigate a procedure and it’s cubic meters of paper, failure is guaranteed, ”he said.

“I call for an agenda to simplify and speed up our procedures, by mobilizing all the players involved in these decisions,” he added. “The key is simplicity and speed”, “especially against China and the United States”.

“If we don’t win the battle for industrialization…”

President Macron opens, with this interview and Thursday’s meeting at the Élysée, a long economic sequence which is part of his attempt to relaunch his five-year term after the pension reform crisis. And for this he emphasizes the reindustrialization of the country, described as “the mother of battles” – after having tackled pensions, long presented in Macronie as “the mother of all reforms”.

“Reindustrializing means creating purchasing power, financing our social model, building a future for our children, attracting innovation and talent from all sectors, reducing the foreign trade deficit. And then, of course, to stop the dropout of this France of the territories, ”he pleaded in the Challenges.

“If we don’t win the battle for industrialization, we won’t be able to win the battle for full employment, restore prospects and projects to the territories and therefore cement our national unity again,” he insisted.

This Thursday, he must specify his strategy and in particular the main lines of the “green industry” bill which will be presented to the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. It aims to decline the aid supposed to make it possible to compete in the face of the ambitious industrial policy of the United States.

He will then go to Dunkirk, in the North, for announcements on a new factory location for electric vehicle batteries. And on Monday, it will host the sixth edition of the “Choose France” summit in Versailles to attract foreign investment.