PARIS — In full Steve Jobs mode, France’s President Emmanuel Macron wore a black turtleneck sweater and went to Twitter to celebrate the creation in France of 25 “unicorn” start-ups – companies with a market value of more than 1 billion euros, or nearly $1.1 billion.
He stated that the French start-up economy “changed the lives of the French” and “strengthened our sovereignty”. It also helped create jobs: the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.4 percent, its lowest level in a decade.
The start-up boom was a milestone for a young president who was elected five years ago as a restless disruptor, promising to crack open the economy and make it competitive in the 21st century.
To some extent, Macron has managed to lure billions of euros in foreign investment and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country whose resistance to change is stubborn. But disruption is just that, and the president has at the same time left many French people feeling restless and unhappy, left behind or ignored.
As Mr Macron seeks re-election from Sunday, it will be two countries that will vote: a mainly urban France that sees the need for change to meet the sweeping technological and economic challenges of the era, and a ‘periphery’ France that is on his guard. of innovation, struggling to make ends meet, alarmed by immigration and outraged by a leader seen as the epitome of the arrogance of the privileged.
Which France appears in greater numbers at the polling booths will determine the outcome.
In many Western societies, the simultaneous proliferation of technology and inequality has created acute problems, fueling social tensions, and France has been no exception. If disenchanted France wins, Marine Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the nationalist right, will most likely also win.
Concerned that he may have lost the left by favoring start-up entrepreneurship and market reforms, Mr Macron has multiplied the call to the left for the past week, resorting to expressions such as “our lives are worth more than their profits.” to present his proposal. observed swinging to the right was not the whole story.
He told France Inter radio that “brotherhood” was the key word in the French national motto, and said during a visit to Brittany that “solidarity” and “equality of opportunity” would be the central themes of a possible second term.
Learn more about the French presidential elections
The run-up to the first round of the elections was dominated by issues of security, immigration and national identity.
The pledges appeared to be signs of growing concern about the outcome of the election. After several months in which Mr Macron’s re-election seemed almost certain, the gap between him and Ms Le Pen has closed. The top two candidates in Sunday’s vote will advance to a second round on April 24.
The election will be largely determined by perceptions of the economy. In Macron’s favour, the country has recovered from the coronavirus lockdowns faster than expected, with economic growth of 7 percent after a devastating pandemic-induced recession.
The most significant cultural transformation has taken place in the field of technology, where Mr Macron’s determination to create a start-up culture centered on new technology has brought about changes that the government sees as essential to France’s future.
Cédric O, the secretary of state for the digital sector, in jeans and a white shirt, without a tie, admits to being obsessed. Day after long day, he plans the future of “la French tech” from his spacious office at the Ministry of Finance.
Five years ago, that might have seemed strange, but something has started to move. “It is vital to obsess because France and Europe are at risk of being kicked out of history,” Mr O, 39, said, borrowing a phrase often used by Mr Macron. “We have to get back in the international technology race.”
To that end, Mr Macron opened Station F, a massive incubator project in Paris that represents France’s start-up ambitions, and earmarked nearly €10 billion in tax credits and other incentives to lure research activity and artificial intelligence activity. A new bank was established to help finance start-ups.
The president drank and dined with multinational chief executives, and created an annual meeting in Versailles called “Choose France”.
Since 2019, France has become the main destination for foreign investment in Europe, with more than 70 investment projects worth €12 billion pledged by foreign multinationals at the Versailles meetings, said Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister.
Over the past four years, IBM, SAP of Germany and DeepMind, the London-based machine learning company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, have invested more in France and created thousands of jobs.
Facebook and Google have also strengthened their French presence and their artificial intelligence teams in Paris. Salesforce, the US cloud computing company, is making headway with more than €2 billion in committed investments.
“Macron brought about a culture shift with France suddenly opening up to the world of financiers,” said Thomas Clozel, a physician by training and the 2016 founder of Owkin, a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to personalize and improve medical treatments. “He made everything easy for start-ups and changed the view of France as an anti-capitalist society.”
François Hollande, the predecessor of Macron’s Socialist Party, famously said in 2012, “My enemy is the financial world.” As a result, Mr Clozel said, raising funds as a French start-up was so problematic that he chose to incorporate in the United States.
No longer.
“Today I’m thinking about being re-admitted to France,” he said. “The ease of dealing with the government, the consortium of start-ups that help each other and the new French tech pride are convincing.”
Among the start-ups that have had a significant impact on French life are Doctolib, a website that allows patients to arrange medical appointments and tests online, and Backmarket, an online marketplace for refurbished tech gadgets that just launched the most valuable start-up in the world. France has become , at $5.7 billion.
They started their lives before Mr Macron took office but have grown exponentially over the past five years.
“I’ve made 56 investments in the past two years, 53 of them in France,” said Jonathan Benhamou, a French entrepreneur who founded PeopleDoc, a company that simplifies access to information for human resources departments.
Now financing new ventures and targeting a new start-up called Resilience in personalized cancer care, Mr Benhamou credits Mr Macron with “giving investors confidence in stability and creating a virtuous cycle.”
Talented engineers no longer go elsewhere because there is an ‘ecosystem’ for them in France, said Mr O.
Mr Macron has insisted that opening the economy is consistent with maintaining protections for French workers and that the advent of la French tech does not mean embracing the rampant capitalism behind the churn of American creativity.
Despite the president’s revisions, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, France remains one of the most expensive countries for payroll taxes, with hourly labor costs of almost €38, close to the level seen in Sweden, Norway and other northern European countries.
“We know we need to move forward,” Mr Riester, the Foreign Trade Minister, said in a recent interview. “We still have some brakes that can be taken off the economy, and we need to cut some red tape in the future.”
Who is running for the presidency of France?
The campaign begins. French citizens will go to the polls in April to elect a president. Here is an overview of the candidates:
“But we are also confident that we will maintain a different system than in the United States,” he added. “It’s our culture and history, and ultimately we think it could be better to attract talent from all over the world.”
Before Macron was elected, unemployment hovered around 10 percent, growth was anemic and a wealth tax, among other fiscal measures, had deterred foreign investment. France was widely seen as an anti-entrepreneurship country.
Mr Macron cut France’s corporate tax rate from 33 percent to 25 percent and introduced a 30 percent flat tax on capital gains. He simplified the labyrinthine labor code, making hiring and firing easier. His administration invested billions of dollars in retraining programs and made it more difficult to continue receiving unemployment benefits.
These policies have boosted the economy while generating much animosity towards the president in a France still deeply linked to its system of social solidarity. It is a country that tends to believe that if work has its place, quality of life should take a bigger place. The anger and alienation that sparked the yellow vest movement in 2018 still lurk just beneath the surface.
Mr Macron’s campaign proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 – rejected by Ms Le Pen – has been met with widespread outrage.
While entrepreneurs are creating new businesses faster than ever, many jobs are precarious. Delivery drivers for UberEats, Deliveroo, Amazon and other online shopping portals have little income security and scarce benefits. A number of French industries remain alarmed, despite Mr Macron’s vows to see a revival in manufacturing.
The problems in these parts of the economy are deeply felt, and that is where Mr Macron is vulnerable.
An abrupt rise in the cost of living, caused in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine, has quickly become one of the biggest problems facing candidates.
During a recent visit to a working-class neighborhood of Dijon — one of the few campaign stops for a president who often seemed more concerned about discussing the war in Ukraine with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia than about the impending election — the Mr Macron was caught off guard by the crowd.
“You don’t realize it,” said a man. “Put yourself in the place of a French family. Shopping, paying for gas, it’s terrible!”
Asked by a woman how it was possible to survive on the minimum government contribution of about $620 a month, Mr Macron said: “I never thought giving a check to people in need was the way to solve their problems. unload.”
Instead, he said, it was essential to find ways to help them get back into the workplace.
