Foreign investments: France, more attractive than ever

In the course of four years, the Choose France summit has become a “must-attend event on the international economic agenda”. The event usually serves to highlight the importance of international investment in supporting growth, innovation and employment throughout France. It also aims to present and explain to major international companies the various reforms carried out to promote economic activity in France.

Government actions to promote attractiveness

“We turned France into the most attractive country in Europe!”, said the French Minister for the Economy on Twitter. It later added that, since 2017, more than 5,300 investments and over 140,000 jobs have been created or retained. A fundamental movement that can be explained, according to the Minister, by some of the measures taken by the government in favour of businesses. Actions that changed France “to become attractive and competitive again and to create jobs” include:

• the simplification of businesses everyday life: reduction of administrative tasks, production tax cuts on companies, the “PACTE” law designed to improve the performance of VSEs and SMEs, the single flat tax, which applies to capital income;
• the France Relance plan, a €100 billion recovery plan, initiated at the peak of the health crisis, which is based on three priorities: ecology, competitiveness and cohesion.

Industrial and territorial vitality

Thanks to this set of actions, France has become the leading destination for foreign investment in Europe since 2019. In particular, it is ranked first in Europe for investment in research and development (R&D) and is also the leading destination for industrial establishments. 

Half of the new projects announced by the Government are industrial projects and nearly 40% are R&D investments. At the heart of these investment projects is an example: the American group Eastman is going to invest €875 million in France for a molecular plastics recycling plant, which will lead to the creation of hundreds of jobs. Another specificity of these investments is the distribution of projects throughout France, which shows, according to the Government, “the vitality of the industrial fabric in the regions”. For example, the German chemical group BASF is investing €300 million in the Chalampé site in eastern France (Haut-Rhin region).

French economy in good shape

It is in this positive context that the Government also favoured another announcement, that of the “good health of the French economy”: about 1 million companies were created in France during the year 2021. According to the government’s information website, a new “historic record” has been beaten, with a total of 995,868 business creations for year 2021 in whole.

According to INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics), which details the figures, this is a 17.4% increase compared to 2020, itself a record year with nearly 850,000 businesses created. More specifically, the creation of individual businesses under the micro-entrepreneur regime is increasing strongly (+17.0%), the creation of companies even more (+24.3%). The increase in creations is less marked (+1.7%) for classic individual companies.

To know more

Foreign investments in France:

- on the French government’s website

- on the Elysée palace website

Company creation in France:

- on the French government’s website

- on the INSEE website