The first edition had left its mark: 140 bosses from all over the world, around fifteen ministers on deck, including the first of them, Edouard Philippe. And to end the day, a speech by Emmanuel Macron under the gold of the Château de Versailles, before a gala dinner in the Galerie des Batailles.
The Choose France convention, orchestrated at the beginning of 2018, was intended to be the founding act of a new romance with foreign investors. Five other summits followed, rolling out the same red carpet to multinationals looking for a European base. The magic worked for a while. Before a form of routine sets in, as shown by the 2024 index of the territory’s attractiveness, unveiled on February 6.
To establish this barometer, nearly 1,600 foreign trade advisors (CCE) – French business leaders based abroad – assessed, between mid-December and mid-January, the perception that potential investors have of charms of France, according to twelve criteria.
First lesson: France’s overall score, 60/100, is down 4 points compared to last year and is back at its 2017 low. “We have made progress in recent years on our traditional weak points: the cost of workforce, administrative burdens or work flexibility, recalls Gilles Bonnenfant, president of the CCE Attractiveness Commission. On the other hand, we have let down our guard on our strong points, such as culture, the quality of infrastructure or the living environment. This 2024 edition sounds like a call to order: nothing is ever taken for granted, the world is moving around us.”
Energy praised, security criticized
At both ends of the index, the cultural environment is credited with a robust 87.5/100, taxation with a modest 26.3/100. But the first recorded a drop of 4.5 points while the second limited the loss to -1.1 points. Only one criterion is gaining ground this year, energy supply and the cost of energy, with a score of 62.5/100, up 8.8 points. Nuclear power is a national diamond that continues to make people envious… as long as we polish it properly.
Police are also part of this investigation. And not for the better: the score relating to personal safety plummets by 11.8 points, to 56/100, the lowest score since the creation of the index in 2015. “The different social movements of the year 2023 may have played a negative role in the perception of France abroad”, notes very diplomatically the report of the CCE, placed under the dual supervision of Bercy and the Quai d’Orsay. Before admitting, a few lines below, that “these events cannot fully explain the concerns surrounding this criterion.”
Gilles Bonnenfant points to other reasons: “the terrorist threat which still looms in France, the riots in the suburbs last summer. And these news items, sometimes derisory, but which are widely relayed on social networks. I have just returned from Bangkok , where I met many local leaders. They all told me about the Mona Lisa doused in soup…”