PARIS — Emmanuel Macron might be tacking right on social issues; on economics he’s going back to his liberal DNA.
Days after a government reshuffle, the French president announced a set of reforms to further liberalize the country’s labor market and cut bureaucracy for businesses in what sounded like a resurrection of his years-old flagship measures.
“We are going to open a second act of acceleration, attractiveness, innovation in France,” Macron told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday as he outlined his reform agenda for this year.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, France’s economic policy has focused on massive subsidy programs. The heavily indebted country is now turning to reforms that should not further burden the state coffers, but aim to relaunch the French economy and make the country more attractive to foreign investors.
Reforms were first announced during a press conference at the Elysée on Tuesday evening, where Macron promised to further cut red tape for businesses with a new law to “fight against the complexities that protect established rents and situations.”
He referred to the reform as an “act II” to the so-called Macron Law, a first liberalization package adopted in 2015 which Macron proposed when he was France’s economy minister.
The aim is to “withdraw some rules, reduce the timeline [of administrative procedures,] facilitate hiring, and increase all thresholds” which trigger administrative obligations for businesses, Macron said Tuesday before echoing the remarks in Davos.
The French president also promised a labor market reform that would restrict access to unemployment and social benefits to those who refuse a job offer, but also better support job seekers when it comes to training and housing.
“We are going to open a second phase on the reform of our labor market by tightening the rules of unemployment insurance, and making hiring and organization much simpler,” Macron said in Davos.
Again, he branded it as a “second act” to the controversial labor market reform he implemented back in 2017, one of his first measures as president which sparked strong criticism, especially from left-wing opposition.
And Macron wants France to become still more attractive for investors. The government is set to present in the spring new measures to draw more financial firms to Paris, which could include further tweaks to the country’s labor law as well as fiscal advantages.
