Every year, billions of euros in investments are announced at the Choose France summit held in Versailles. The attractiveness of France to international investors fluctuates dramatically, with some years seeing more money exiting than entering through foreign investments. For this 7th edition, among the already announced projects, the most significant concerns Microsoft, which promises to invest 4 billion euros in Artificial Intelligence. There is also talk of a potential fertilizer factory worth 1.3 billion euros. Amazon will put down 1.2 billion euros and promises 3,000 jobs. The creation of a nickel refining plant will involve an investment of 300 million euros and will create 200 jobs. In total, no less than 15 billion euros of investments are promised to France! "However, behind these highly publicized announcements, the overall attractiveness of the country has not necessarily improved," writes Sylvain Bersinger of the Asteres consultancy. Looking back at these major investment events, sometimes unpleasant surprises have followed in the deafening silence of the Élysée Palace. For instance, in 2018, the American group Del Monte had announced the establishment of a fresh fruit cutting plant in Somme, which never materialized. In Normandy, the Korean group SPC, which wanted to produce pastries on a large scale, abandoned the project.

Billions of dollars promised by tech giants are applauded, but some experts like Stéphane Roder, CEO of AI Builders, are more concerned: "The means deployed by Microsoft to establish itself in France are impressive and suggest a dominant position in the market. Moreover, it's less about services than exports that our trade balance needs to move forward! However, our industrial production in France is generally stable. Thus, foreign investments only weakly support the reindustrialization of our country, a goal repeatedly emphasized by Emmanuel Macron. In March 2024, 'the volume of industrial production was identical to what it was in January 2010,' notes Sylvain Bersinger from Asteres. In other words, in 14 years, foreign investments on our soil have not fundamentally changed this barometer. Even though official figures account for the creation of 100,000 industrial jobs in seven years!

And that's exactly where the problem lies! The jobs created versus the amounts of investments. The disproportion between the volume of these investments and the net creation of jobs is striking!

In reality, the flows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) experience significant fluctuations, with, for example, a drop in amounts during the health crisis, followed by a rebound, and then a significant decrease in 2023. According to the Asteres study, there does not seem to have been a regular increase in incoming FDI flows over the past decade. Ultimately, the attractiveness of France has rather stagnated... even though other research firms like EY indicate that France is the most attractive country in Europe! There's often a long way from the cup to the lip! A gap between the media announcement of billions invested over several years and the final reality! Once established, companies sometimes become disillusioned: only 52% of American companies established in our country continue to have a positive perception of France, according to the barometer of the French-American Chamber of Commerce... Emmanuel Macron, the new "Mozart of investment"?