LONDON - French President Emmanuel Macron will unveil on Thursday details of a much-hyped national stimulus plan for his country, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic which has plunged the French economy into its deepest recession since World War II.
Mr Macron insists that the proposals, grandly entitled"France Relaunched", should not be seen as"a strategy to face the difficulty of the moment". The"France Relaunched" programme is meant to secure the future; it is, as Mr Macron put it,"not simply a strategy to respond to the consequences of the crisis, but one designed to ensure how our country can emerge stronger".
The French president aims to make his country more attractive by emphasising in the plan up to thirty different measures which include everything from the promotion of a more modern tax service to a more flexible policy of hiring and firing employees, one of the biggest hurdles for current investors in France.
Although most French business leaders praise their government for keeping unemployment down during the health emergency, the estimate is that up to 600,000 jobs were lost in France in the first half of this year, according to statistics compiled by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies.
And the history of France is littered with failed promises to relax labour regulation, which get rejected by the county's powerful trade unions.