France attracts €15 billion in foreign investment during the ‘Choose France’ forum

6 months ago 22

France attracted a record €15 billion in foreign investment during the government’s flagship “Choose France” event, which brought together some 180 CEOs from around the world and some 60 French business leaders at Versailles Palace on Monday.

The seventh edition of the government’s flagship conference saw the announcement of 56 new projects and the prospect of 10,000 new jobs.

This is the result of the “recognition of the work carried out over the past seven years based on enhancing our know-how, maintaining our decarbonised energy, creating a favourable normative framework and fiscal stability,” Macron told Le Parisien in an interview.

The announcement comes as France has just been named Europe’s most attractive country for investment for the fifth year running, according to auditing firm EY, with 1,194 new and expanded sites, ahead of the UK (985) and Germany (733).

“Faced with a post-Brexit United Kingdom that needs to reinvent its model, and a Germany shaken by the energy crisis, France shows a relatively reassuring face, despite chronic social turbulence,” reported EY.

The largest investment was announced by Microsoft, which will invest €4 billion in data centre development to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure.

Microsoft plans to build a new data centre in eastern France, near Mulhouse, while sites in the Paris region and Marseille will be expanded.

“Microsoft chose France because we have low-carbon electricity,” French Industry and Energy Minister Roland Lescure told France Info.

In addition, US giant Amazon will invest €1.2 billion in data centres for its cloud business, particularly for generative artificial intelligence (AI), and in its logistics warehouses, creating “more than 3,000 jobs”.

Other projects announced include a new low-carbon fertiliser plant in the Somme (€1.2 billion), new production lines for McCain French chips and potatoes in the Pas-de-Calais and Marne regions (€350 million), a nickel refinery plant near Bordeaux (€300 million) and pharmaceutical investments with Pfizer (€500 million), AstraZeneca (€365 million) and GSK (€140 million).

With the theme for the 2024 edition being “France, land of champions”, the government is trying to tap into Olympic rhetoric, probably hoping it will boost the campaign of Valérie Hayer, the head of the EU election list for Macron’s Renaissance party, which is trailing far behind the frontrunner, the far-right Rassemblement National, in the EU election race.

However, to put the “Choose France” announcements into perspective, according to the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), foreign investment in France amounted to €34.6 billion in 2022, exceeded €35 billion in 2018 and approached €40 billion in 2015.

“Most of the projects announced at the summit are projects that would have seen the light of day with or without the summit,” Asterès chief economist Sylvain Bersinger told AFP in an interview, pointing out that France has maintained similar levels of foreign investment over the past 10 years.

(Laurent Geslin | Euractiv.fr)