After the weeks of heckling caused by the pension reform, Emmanuel Macron is reinvesting in the economic field, unveiling his strategy to “accelerate” the “reindustrialization” of France. In front of players from French industry, the President of the Republic drew on Thursday, May 11 the main lines of the “green industry” bill, which will be presented next Tuesday in the Council of Ministers, and the measures to implement this acceleration. , public funding at stake.
“Reindustrializing is the only way to give jobs everywhere in the country. It’s an economic, political, geopolitical and territorial battle. We can win this battle”, promised the head of state before presenting the measures highlights of his project.
A “green industry tax credit” and a “green car bonus”
A new “green industry tax credit” will be introduced to support the production of batteries, heat pumps, wind turbines or solar panels, announced Emmanuel Macron. This tax credit, which will be part of the green industry bill “will make it possible to trigger 20 billion in investments on national territory by 2030”, according to the President of the Republic.
The most emblematic measure of his bill: the ecological bonus for the purchase of an electric car will be reformed to “take into account the carbon footprint” of their production and thus favor vehicles manufactured in Europe. In the automotive sector, where China is by far the leading producer of electric vehicles in the world, but relies for this on energy production still largely based on coal, it is a question of supporting ” batteries and vehicles that are produced in Europe because they have a good carbon footprint,” he explained. “This does not mean that we are doing protectionism but we do not want to use French taxpayers’ money to accelerate non-European industrialization”, he added, calling for “not to repeat mistakes”. committed with the photovoltaic industry, dominated by the Chinese.
The criteria for awarding this reformed ecological bonus will be defined “by the end of the year”, according to the Head of State. “Builders will therefore have to justify that they meet these ecological criteria required to be able to benefit from the ecological bonus”, he has already advanced.
In the process, Emmanuel Macron also announced that public orders would take into account environmental criteria “for key decarbonization products” such as wind turbines and heat pumps from July 2024 instead of 2026.
700 million euros for training in jobs of the future
The second key element of its strategy to reindustrialize the country and make industry greener: training for jobs of the future. Emmanuel Macron announced the investment of 700 million euros to improve training, by “evolving the training map at all levels of diplomas”. 15,000 new places in the industrial profession will be opened from the start of the 2023 academic year in higher education, “with training adapted to needs, in professions under pressure, closer to the territories”.
The Head of State linked these 700 million euros of investment with the reform of the vocational high school. “You have to better redirect young people, for example, by informing them from the 5th with the learning day. Industry needs skills. We will have hundreds of thousands of jobs that will appear in the reindustrialization”, predicted the president. We must “develop training, sometimes shorter […] as close as possible to where we live, sometimes in sub-prefectures, small prefectures”, he insisted.
“A European regulatory pause” on environmental standards
Emmanuel Macron also called for “a European regulatory break” in terms of environmental constraints, believing that the EU had done “more than all the neighbors” and that it now “needed stability”. “We are ahead, in regulatory terms, of the Americans, the Chinese or any other power in the world,” said Emmanuel Macron. “We must not make new changes to the rules, because we will lose all the players”, further pleaded the Head of State, stressing that this posed “risks” on “financing” of projects.
With all this bill, “French industry in 2030 will be decarbonized” indicated the President of the Republic. Tomorrow, Friday and at the beginning of next week, the Head of State begins a long economic sequence which will be illustrated with a trip to Dunkirk, to visit the Aluminum factory, “the largest producer of primary aluminum in Europe” , according to the Elysee. Next Monday, he will go to the Palace of Versailles for the sixth edition of the “Choose France” summit, which aims to attract foreign investment to the country.