Economic recovery: speech by Arnaud Montebourg 10 July

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Speech by Arnaud Montebourg

Minister for the Economy, Productive Recovery and Digital Technology 10 July 2014

for France's economic recovery

 

- ONLY THE PRONOUNCEMENT IS AUTHENTIC -

 

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Ministers,
Ladies and gentlemen, parliamentarians, ladies and gentlemen,

The economic, social and political actors that you are, need to understand and know, share the vision of the Government in its strategy for the recovery of the French economy.
You want to know where we're going, what we want and how we're going to get there.

A road map in military language is a strategic direction, a description of how to overcome obstacles on the steep road to economic recovery that lies ahead.

At the Ministry of Productive Recovery, which was entrusted to me for two years and which continues today within this great Ministry of the Economy, we first had to face the urgency of the multiplication of business failures, we invented the Commissioners for Productive Recovery, then the Economic Resilience Fund to save, in addition to the innumerable threatened SMEs (nearly 2.000), large pieces of French petrochemicals (Kem One), French aluminium (Rio Tinto), French special steels (Ascométal), French household appliances (FagorBrandt).

We have created the Public Investment Bank and boosted the State Holdings Agency, which has accumulated nearly 3,000 holdings in our companies to support them in the crisis.
From emergency firefighter, this ministry became a builder, creating the 34 industrial plans that imagined an industrial policy that had disappeared 30 years ago and thus reinventing the products, factories and jobs of the new Made in France.
From September 12, 2013 at the Élysée Palace to July 9, 2014, 34 babies of the industry were born as the plans, all of which have been definitively validated, are now being implemented.

However, these industrial policy efforts alone do not sum up an economic policy that must focus on growth, the search for full employment and the conditions that must be met in order to finally emerge from the crisis.

As Minister for the Economy, I will have only one enemy in the responsibility entrusted to me, conformism and preconceived ideas.
But I will also have a constant ally: boldness and new ideas.

At a time when the European Union is failing to emerge from the crisis, it is worth recalling the reasons for the crisis that began 6 years ago, in 2008 - 2009.
If I had to identify just one, I would summarize it by saying that the causes of the crisis are in the oblivion of the middle and working classes in Western countries.

The current indebtedness of the States comes from the explosion at the time of the collapse of Lehman Brothers of the speculative subprime bubble, which was none other than a support by the abusive credit of the American middle classes' consumption.
The accumulation of public and private debt in all Western countries, including our own, is directly linked to the artificial support of consumption and the demand of the middle and working classes, either in the form of social benefits or in the form of speculative credit abuse, as in Spain and its real estate bubble.
The reason is that these middle classes have been structurally impoverished by a permanent pressure on their wages, linked to 10 years of excessive competition with emerging countries in the globalization process.
Jürgen Habermas, the famous German philosopher, summed it all up. Globalization is the collapse of the purchasing power of ballot papers. ". If there is no purchasing power, there is no demand on businesses, there is no economic activity and no growth.
The drop in demand in Western economies is the structural disease that caused them to fall, from which they have not recovered. Only those countries that have been able to stimulate or not to weigh on demand have been able to make and see growth restart. The economic impoverishment of the middle and working classes is the cause of the crisis, but its worsening is now the consequence.
The way out of the crisis is to reconnect with the middle classes by relying on them, focusing on them in the fight against their economic impoverishment, educational weakening, social decline and political exclusion.
It is these executives at the end of their rights who cannot find work at the age of 50, these workers in the manufacturing sectors condemned to precarious jobs while waiting for retirement, these small bosses crushed by taxes and social security contributions who cannot support their families from their work, these technicians worried by the digital revolution who wonder how they are going to finance their retraining, these deindustrialised territories desperately trying to bounce back.
The middle classes have already paid for the crisis, they cannot pay for the way out of it. I prefer them to be the actors and drivers of the future growth that I propose to seek together.

* *

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But in order to succeed in this mission, we first had to tackle the difficult task of rebuilding our productive apparatus, which had been degraded and damaged by long years of inaction and casualness.
It was necessary to sound the general mobilization.
74 billion trade deficit, considers ruthless our loss of performance, waves of relocation, deindustrialisation and 750,000 industrial jobs lost.
In line with the report by Mr Louis Gallois, we have made an intellectual and political revolution, together with the French.
The competitive revolution: we have explained to all the French people that global competition is a global economic war forcing us to organize and arm ourselves.
We have chosen to unite all the Nation's forces around the company, to enable it to regain or improve its profitability, authorize it to invest and hire again.
This policy is an act of national survival.

That is why it is crucial, it must be sacred and consecrated because it transcends all of us, opposition and plural majorities, trade unions and employers alike can and must recognise themselves in it.For there can be no social model, no public service, no sustainably financed diplomatic and military power if we do not have a restored, strong and wealth-creating productive apparatus.
That is why this revolution must be a constant and stubborn work. It should have started before us!
And it will have to continue after us!
For it appeals to economic patriotism by leading the company's forces, shareholders and managers, employees and unions to come together in the interest of the company's survival and growth.

The Employment Competitiveness Tax Credit (CICE) and the Responsibility Pact are a historic mobilisation in favour of companies. First of all, it is an act of trust made to the company's partners in charge of deciding together on the use of these corporate tax cuts.
In its latest economic outlook note, INSEE investigated the initial effects of the CICE. One out of two companies states that they use it first to invest. But 43 % in services and 31 % in industry also want to improve their employment level by triggering hiring.
The first effects of the CICE are therefore already being felt on the margin rate, which is recovering by 1.3 points over one year. Effort that must be continued.
Moreover, competitiveness is not just about the cost of labour.
It is also the cost of energy that we are looking after in the energy transition law, it is also the cost of capital, which we are remedying with the birth of the Public Investment Bank, a bank that is less greedy and more patient than the financial and banking system that we want to bring back on the right path of financing SMEs, VSEs, the real, concrete and local economy after the years of misguided subprimes.

I would like to thank these unions for all the sensitivities that, on a daily basis and in the field, are the best patriots of their working tool, sometimes defending it against the opinion of their shareholders, and who are able to sign competitiveness agreements to preserve and increase employment.
And I also want to thank those patriotic patrons engaged in the battle of Made in France who compromise to achieve economic victories for their companies and our country.

This competitive revolution also consecrates the entrepreneur as one of the pillars of the Nation. One of the figures that the French are right to hold on to.
We are fortunate in that we have a wealth of entrepreneurial initiatives, a breeding ground for culture and the creation of new businesses.
This is certainly why we want to make France a nation of entrepreneurs.
But in return, the Nation and all its components are entitled to expect that this effort creates duties.
The French support their companies, but in return, they would like companies to make France and the French work.
Only six out of forty economic branches have only begun to negotiate counterparties to the CICE and the Responsibility Pact.
This is why I am appealing to bosses big and small: this is the first time that business has been at the centre of public and political concern, the French are supporting you by making the historic sacrifice of 40 billion in tax cuts.

Now is the time to make this policy a popular historical compromise: Give the French people in return to see your patriotic sense by creating activity in France, hiring as many people as you can and investing in your productive apparatus.
Don't wear pins, instead post on the front door of your plants, yours, the number of jobs created, discuss it with your unions, your employee delegates, shake hands on television. Make a commitment for the people, for France, just as we have made a commitment for your companies.

* *

This union of all French people around Made in France, this cultural battle for economic patriotism is leading France gradually towards a progressive transformation of its economic model.
At a time when we were tempted by the Anglo-Saxon liberal and financial model, here we are back to an entrepreneurial model of solidarity, productivity and innovation.
We stand together to strengthen and support our producers. We are fighting to moderate our production costs.
We're organizing ourselves to reinvent our productions.

For the past two years, we have oriented all our choices towards a powerful innovation policy:

- Sanctuarisation of the research tax credit, now extended to innovation, prototyping and design,

- Reinforcement of tax support for young innovative companies,

- Creation of the World Innovation Contest and its 1,200 candidates,

- Creation of the Objets de la Nouvelle France Industrielle, on this stage at Bercy, which exalts the values of creation,

- Tax advantages for the robotization of production processes,

- Birth of the Banque Publique d'Investissement and its venture capital ecosystem,

- Creation of the most liberal and at the same time the safest crowdfunding regime in the world,

- Birth of French Tech and its digital quarters,

- Dynamics created by the 34 industrial plans that, in all fields of industry, reinvent through technology, companies, products, plants and jobs.

These 34 plans mobilise 20 billion in investment from private actors for only 3.5 billion in public investment. They organize a concrete alliance of public and private laboratories, public and private funds, public authorities and private companies, which will gradually change France.

The 34 roadmaps for the industrial plans have just been completed. They are both much bolder and much more reasonable and realistic than if my administration and I had designed them.
These 34 plans should, according to Mac Kinsey, create 480,000 new jobs in 10 years, enough to regain many of the industrial jobs lost over the past decade.
Already the first prototypes are appearing, such as the electric plane designed and built in Mérignac ;
The first car that consumes less than 2 litres per 100 km for all will be presented at the World Motor Show in Paris this autumn;
The national network of charging stations for electric vehicles is about to be born since the law has been passed;
A city of connected objects Made in France - of private initiative - imagined by Eric Carreel, president of Withings and project manager of the "Connected Objects" industrial plan, will be created in the autumn;
The TGV of the future is announced for the beginning of 2017;
The Made In France pack for the thermal renovation of buildings is ready and contains innovative technical solutions;
Prototypes of 15-storey wooden buildings are being developed;
The agri-food industry is proposing 500 projects. Green chemistry proposes 45 of them with 2 billion in investments. The recycling industry proposes 111 projects with 785 million in investments.
Industrial France is reinventing itself!

Already, the first results of this competitive revolution and these two years of effort are being felt.
Indicators of France's attractiveness in May and June 2014 are recovering spectacularly as indicated by the barometers of Ernst & Young, AT Kearney or KPMG.
In terms of investment projects actually recorded, we are halting the decline that began in 2010: +23 % of R&D projects, +9% of new locations for the Ernst & Young 2014 Barometer, enabling us to return to our 2010 level and remain Europe's 3rd largest destination and 1st destination for industrial facilities.
34% of the investors surveyed by E&Y plan to establish or develop activities in France, a figure higher than that for the United Kingdom and Germany (27%).
18% of foreign investors not established in France plan to set up or invest in France, i.e. an increase of 8 points compared to 2013!
We have thus just regained the level of attractiveness that France had lost in 2010. This is what our economic patriotism is for.

 

This is the way to be stronger and better equipped in the face of global competition and unfair globalisation.

 

This is the meaning of the decree of 14 May 2014 that the Prime Minister and I have taken to control foreign investment in France in order to prevent certain companies from becoming easy prey.

This decree makes it possible to impose global alliances between equals; it allows the State to rebalance, protect and defend the sovereignty of our companies, and thus strengthen itself to conquer.

The European Commission has in recent days notified the French Government of its approval of the decree as being perfectly compatible with the European Treaties, while at the same time organising the necessary protection of our sovereign interests, as is the case in many countries of the world.
This decree was once used in the General Electric - Alstom case.
It will still be used in some sensitive sectors such as water, health, national defence, the gaming industry, transportation, energy and telecommunications.

It is the same economic patriotism that must be seen in the mobilization that we are organizing of the supplementary pension funds that we are going to ask to invest part of their 200 billion in the target companies of the CAC 40 in order to build up a long-term, reliable and solid shareholder base that is resistant to undesirable takeovers.
It is exactly the same patriotic sense that must be given to the Compagnie Nationale des Mines, whose objective is to preserve our industrial sovereignty in the supply of raw materials, industrial materials, metals and rare earths for our industry, as Japan, China or Germany have done.
It is still the same economic patriotism that leads us to refuse to allow the European Union to negotiate with the United States of America in a way that is not in line with the interests of Europe and France in the Transatlantic Treaty!

* *

But some people wonder whether this policy of supporting our productive apparatus to the tune of 40 billion is compatible with the policy of forced reduction of our public deficits.
Let's look at the numbers and the realities, if you will, 6 years after the collapse of the American bank Lehman Brothers.
Since 2008, the Euro zone's growth lag has been almost 10 GDP points behind that of the United States of America.At the end of 2009, after the events of the crisis, the unemployment rate was 10 % in both the USA and the Euro zone.
Today, the unemployment rate is 6.1 % in the United States and 11.7 % in the Euro zone. Congratulations to Europe! We are in the honour roll of the explosion of unemployment!
In 2012 and 2013, France was above the average growth rate of the Euro zone, in 2014-2015, it is likely to be below it.
But it is the whole Euro zone which after two years of negative growth has come out of recession but the results remain very worrying:

In the first quarter of 2014
Netherlands -1.4
Finland -0.4
Portugal -0.7
Italy -0.1
France 0
Belgium +0.3
Spain +0.3
Only Germany posted a +0.8 1Q1T but industrial production has just recorded a strong decrease of -1.8 1Q1T in May in this country, after -0.3 in April.
It is therefore a European disease that has made the Eurozone the lantern of world growth.

The reasons for this are the combination of over-calibrated austerity, with the simultaneity of austerity policies in all European countries, added to the exclusively accounting approach of the European Union, to which must be added the chronic underestimation of the impact of policies to restore public accounts on growth, All this, in addition to the absence of a policy of repurchase of public debt by the European Central Bank, which is now practiced by all the central banks of the world, leads the Euro zone to continue to accumulate a spectacular and worrying growth gap.

However, according to a study by Mr Jan in 't Veld, economist in charge of the European Commission's multinational model, budgetary policy has cut growth over the period 2011-2013 by :

  • 4.8 points of GDP in France, of which 1.8 points related to the austerity of other euro area countries;
  • 3.9 points of GDP in Germany, of which 1.9 related to the austerity of the other euro zone countries ; So here's the problem posed clearly:

Reducing debt and deficits and restoring balance to our public accounts cannot be done at the expense of growth, because growth itself can reduce deficits even faster.
As early as October 2013, I denounced, in the wake of Louis Gallois, a euro that was too strong and too expensive and which penalised the exports of European industry.
We have the most depressed area in the world but with the most appreciating currency in the world, with an ECB that is not enforcing its mandate of an inflation of 2 % since we are at 0.5 %. And the situation has become dangerous because of the risk of deflation.
These assessments were taken up by Prime Minister Manuel Valls in his general policy speech. He recalled that " the efforts we are making to reduce our deficits, our structural reforms, the competitiveness of businesses and labour costs must not be swept away by an excessively high level of the euro. ".
He's right!
The ECB has therefore come to realise the urgency of the situation and the risk of deflation in the euro area.
On 5 June, the Bank took historic steps towards a more accommodative monetary policy:

- a cut in key rates to 0.15 1Q1T,
- a negative deposit rate of -0.1%,
- the possibility of releasing several hundred billion euros in ECB loans to banks to finance credit to companies.

The ECB's decisions of 5 June are a step in the right direction. However, the euro still remains high (above 1.36 $). And nothing has moved for a month.
In a context where inflation is historically low (0.5 1Q1Q June), it is therefore inevitable that the ECB will go even further with unconventional monetary policies by finally purchasing government debt securities if the euro still does not fall and if growth does not pick up again in the euro area.

This is what all the central banks in the world are doing in an uncomplex manner, such as the Bank of England (+2 1Q1Q growth), the Bank of Japan (+2 1Q1Q growth) and the US Federal Reserve (+3 1Q1Q growth).

When we went to Washington with the President of the Republic, we met with President Barack Obama, and he told us " in the United States, we have revived growth -and it's true that they are now at 3 % of growth- we've done the job, what are you waiting for in Europe to boost growth in your turn? ? »
When we talk to the International Monetary Fund, Mrs Lagarde and her teams have been saying and repeating for months, if not years, that excessively tight budgetary restrictions are likely to prevent recovery in the Eurozone and a fall in unemployment.
When we meet with the OECD, its Secretary-General tells us in substance "Vou have forgotten that growth was supposed to be the talisman for restoring public accounts. But by trying to restore the public accounts, you are preventing growth, which is preventing you from restoring the public accounts."

The policy of reducing public accounts everywhere in Europe and in France therefore deprives us of growth because it weighs on it.
This is the paradox of this morally right but economically wrong idea.
It is morally right that whoever makes debts should pay them back. But it is economically stupid to do so, so precisely the fact of doing so prevents you from doing so and leads you to the exact opposite.
For the policy of reducing deficits, despite all the efforts that have to be made, despite all the obstacles that have to be overcome, does not allow deficits to be reduced, because by depriving the economy of growth, it prevents precisely the restoration of public accounts.
The European Union is therefore confusing morality and economics.

In general, I believe that no one should leave the economy to moralist accountants, especially when they have rigid ideas.
Economics is an art of movement that requires permanent corrections, anticipation, adaptation, pragmatism and refusal of dogmatism in all circumstances.

Germany gave us a good example of this pragmatism 10 years ago.
In November 2003, after having launched Agenda 2010 and its reforms in March of the same year, the German Government went to the European Commission, together with President Chirac, to say: ". If you want me to succeed in my reforms, do not force me to achieve too rapid a budgetary consolidation at the same time. ".
Germany was suffering. Its growth was negative (-0.2 %). Its public deficit of -4 %. The Commission agreed. Because it knew at the time that reforms needed to be carried out if the economy was not to be suffocated.
In his general policy speech, Prime Minister Manuel Valls has already pointed out that the demand for the restoration of public accounts could not break growth.
This marked a turning point in the quinquennium.

The Prime Minister asked me to open the debate when I arrived at the Ministry of Economy, with the European Union and ourselves. I have done so.
I set up the Independent Council for Growth and Full Employment, chaired by five world-renowned economists: Jean-Paul Fitoussi, former President of the OFCE and Professor at the University of Rome, Enrico Giovannini, former Chief Statistician of the OECD, member of the Club of Rome and Professor of Statistical Economics at the University of Rome, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, former President of the World Bank, advisor to President Bill Clinton, Professor at Columbia University, Philippe Martin, Professor at Sciences-Po Paris, researcher at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and Peter Bofinger, Professor at the University of Würtzburg, member of the Council of Elders of the Federal Government of Germany.

These five economists are saying exactly the same thing as the IMF and the OECD are repeating in chorus, criticising the macroeconomic and budgetary choices imposed by the Commission on European governments.

When he came to power, Matteo Renzi, the President of the Italian Council, called the Stability Pact a pact of stupidity. Later, Mr Renzi called for better use of the "Stability Pact". flexibility This is a "stimulus package" allowed under European budgetary rules to boost growth-enhancing investment. He added that " without growth Europe has no future ".
Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor, German Minister for Economic Affairs, defended the relaxation of European rules by stating that "... the EU is not a single market for the European Union. the costs of all reform policy measures should not be taken into account in the deficit criteria ".
France is an undivided co-owner of the European Union like all its partners.France's policy is therefore not inseparable from the Union's policy and this is one of the reasons why France has a duty to tell the European Union that it is on the wrong track when it is wrong.
The European Union is not a school with its good and bad pupils, and if it were to be a school, then it would be the school of underperformance, the school of recession, deflation and unemployment.This is the school of economic mismanagement which, after the Eurozone's worldwide underperformance, deserves that we finally open the black box and that we take stock of it within the framework of the new European Commission.
Can we accept that collective errors in economic policy linked to incompetence, dogmatism, perhaps the ideological blindness of European leaders, can cause risks of destruction, of political fracturing of a common good that is the European Union and that whole generations have taken so long to build?

The unemployment of hundreds of thousands more Europeans and French people must be avoided.
It is enough to read, to listen, to hear something other than prejudices, certainties, beliefs in which brains are locked.
There is a historical responsibility of the ruling class to listen to the suffering of its people, to choose alternative, different and innovative paths that will avoid and avert the risk of self-destruction of the country.
Do you believe that the 17 years I spent on the ground with the French, in houses, in the stairwells of buildings, on farms, in people's homes, did not teach me what they think and what they want?They are not averse to sacrifice and effort. They just want them to serve the useful cause of progress and improvement for themselves and their children.
Sacrifices are always asked of them. They have not seen any improvement in employment, prosperity, purchasing power for a long time.
And today we are passively witnessing the massive transhumance of cohorts of voters from right and left parties to the National Front, which proposes as a political programme chaos for France and hatred between French people.

To allow unemployment to rise is to allow the National Front to advance, to rush France and to surrender to the destruction of Europe.
Stemming unemployment means stemming the progress of the National Front. Bringing down unemployment means bringing down the National Front.
It is not only the left that is threatened, it is France in its constitution, its strength and its power that will be threatened.
This call for responsibility on the part of leaders is a call, as you have understood, for imagination and the abandonment of taboos; it is a call to fight conformism.
It is a call to build on the courage that is not lacking in the Government.

I therefore propose, since the debate is now open, a change in our macroeconomic strategy.
I'd like to introduce her to you. 

* It is not a question of abandoning our efforts, because we need to detoxify ourselves from public spending.
The aim is to make them more useful, more productive and more growth-oriented.
It is not a question of opposing a supply policy in favour of firms to a demand policy in favour of households, because firms need households for their order books, and conversely, households need firms to find jobs and obtain good wages.
It is a matter of combining the two, because we need both, because the economy is walking and moving on two legs, supply and demand.
* It is not a question of questioning the 50 billion in savings, it is a question of using them well.
It's about giving them back to the French.
Between 2010 and 2014, budgetary and fiscal measures have already led to a reduction in the structural public deficit by 4.2 points of GDP out of 88 billion.
This is a historic effort.

With the Stability Pact, France will make savings of 50 billion. This is a new historic effort that has no precedent.
We are making this effort in all our departments with seriousness and application.
But it is undeniable that these economies will have a recessive impact for both France and Europe if they are not compensated by a monetary or budgetary injection of equivalent magnitude in the Eurozone economy. Or if they are not returned, for the most part, to businesses and households in the form of tax cuts.
This is why, in the framework of the flexibilities recently gained by the President of the Republic in the context of the reorientation of Europe, I propose to apply a three-thirds rule for the allocation of public expenditure savings and the overall budgetary efforts that we are going to make.

- One third would be allocated to reducing the public deficit, ensuring our fiscal seriousness and further consolidation of public accounts.
- One third would be allocated to reducing the compulsory levies on companies, these are the commitments of the Responsibility Pact, pure and simple, and our Competitive Revolution.
- A final third would be allocated to reducing the tax burden on households in order to improve their purchasing power without undermining our decisions to improve the competitiveness of our businesses.
This three-thirds rule is likely to support growth, allowing our public accounts to be restored in another way.
That way we could get back to creating jobs and finally stop destroying jobs.

An inflection of this nature can be the springboard for an economic rebound and a reunion between French people on the road to growth and job creation.
This inflection should be natural.
What Brussels agreed to Germany in 2003, it cannot refuse in 2014 after the violent crisis of 2008 without running the risk of seeing the Eurozone sink into deflation and mass unemployment.

* *

Growth, as we can see, because it is based on political solutions, is a political issue.
We will therefore achieve this through political action and also through a policy of transforming our economy.
Colbert, Turgot, Saint Simon, Pompidou, Mendès-France, political history is paved with the actions of these transformers who modernised economic relations, brought France out of its archaisms, out of its antiquity, gave it in its great stages of agricultural, industrial and technical modernisation the new impetus it needed.
The battle plan for a return to growth and job creation is threefold:

- Fighting annuities and redistributing purchasing power ;
- Investing in infrastructure and transforming the country ;
- Reinventing funding to replace scarce public money.

The battle for the gradual transformation of our economy has already been opened by supporting the models of cooperative capitalism, social and solidarity entrepreneurship, which allows employees to own the capital of their companies.Minister Carole Delga will be at my side to bring to life this innovative law on the social and solidarity economy, which can change life in the workplace.It will continue with the necessary fight against rents and monopoly. It will be the battle of the moderns against the ancients, the battle of audacity against conformism, the battle against the revolutionaries of the status quo.

Many professions are in a monopoly situation and capture by their position income from the population for services paid too much money, which undermines the purchasing power of households.
This is the case for professions protected by monopolies. Bailiffs, commercial court clerks, lawyers, some health professions, and many other regulated sectors: auto schools, dental technicians in which a reduction in the price of services is necessary.
A report from the General Inspectorate of Finance was written about these 37 regulated professions that I found locked in my safe three times. I will make it public when the time comes to create transparency by opening up the debate to public opinion.
A law on growth and purchasing power that we are going to work on all summer will include some thirty measures designed to put an end to monopolies and to restore to the French users of these services the purchasing power they lack and to the French economy the growth that we lack.
It will improve the daily lives of the French and allow these sectors to develop more freely.

All in all, with this law to get the economy moving again, we hope to restore the equivalent of 6 billion euros in purchasing power to the French, and to the most modest.

I think of those millions of French people who each year initiate a lawsuit and pay the price of the acts of a judicial officer 10 to 20 times more expensive than a registered letter which would render the same service, as it is the case in other European countries. We could restore this purchasing power to the population by the end of this monopoly.
It will therefore be a law of purchasing power for all French people, who will gain from it in their daily lives. It will also be a law to stimulate growth through household demand, which will obtain additional means to support the activity of our businesses.
The 6 billion returned to the economy and to the French people next year, in 2015, is the equivalent of the household support measures negotiated by the Government and the Prime Minister with his slender majority, in the form of tax cuts.

Transforming economic relations means supporting and stimulating the economy and building growth. But we need to go further, and if possible, we need to boost it by putting our foot on the accelerator.
This is the meaning of the national mobilization of all public and private investment resources for the transformation of the country.

* *

The spirit of Franklin Roosevelt blows in the heads of the Ministry of Economy, this great President of the United States of America invented the construction of hydroelectric dams during 10 years in the valley of Tennessee to put his economy back on the water after the great crisis of 1929.
President Roosevelt said, " Try something, and if that doesn't work, try something else. ".
We, too, are going to try something other than European austerity.

The Government has heard the proposals of the European Trade Union Confederation, which brings together 80 trade union organizations and proposes to revive the European economy through investment amounting to 2 % of European GDP.
This is the meaning of the growth initiative that the Government and the President of the Republic have set and brought to Brussels as part of the agenda of the new Commission.
We know that public and private investment has fallen by 18 % in the European Union compared to its pre-crisis level. In 2013, the Union invested, all sectors combined, nearly 450 billion less than in 2007 before the crisis.
Europe needs levers and growth support to counterbalance the effects of the threat of deflation.
Moreover, the historically low cost of money should provide an incentive to increase private productive investment.

A report by several French economic institutes, OFCE, and German ones, IMK and ECLM, have called for a European recovery through public investment.
The calculated effects expected for 1.5 % of European GDP mobilised in the form of public investment at the European level would lead to an increase in GDP of more than 2 %, an increase in private investment of 10 % and a decrease of 5 % in the unemployment rate in all European countries, thus validating the proposal of the European Trade Union Confederation.
This is what we must organise, in our own way, on our own scale and with our public resources, even if they have become rare.
The situation is indeed paradoxical.

We are experiencing a period of abundant financial capacity and favourable credit conditions with historically low credit rates.
In addition, France has a record and massive savings of EUR 3,600 billion. However, France is experiencing an investment deficit
- in infrastructure, whether it is the renewal of old buildings or new construction;
- in some companies, the most recent, those experiencing strong growth and those seeking to renew their production apparatus.

Investments in infrastructure generate the jobs of today and the common goods of tomorrow.
The approach is to identify the investments, what my services and the Office of the Commissioner for Strategy and Foresight have accomplished.

I therefore propose that we resume the construction of infrastructures that would benefit us, such as the construction of dams on our rivers in France. Studies by the Ministry of Ecology and electricity operators show that there is a great potential for these renewable energies that still needs to be exploited with excellent profitability. These new dams can become the means to achieve the ambitious objectives of increasing the production of electricity from renewable sources.

It is possible to mobilize national and international private investment to launch these construction programmes that will put the country to work and reduce the number of unemployed.

I also propose that we speed up the equipping of 30 million homes with fibre optics by including this obligation for operators in the law of growth and purchasing power in the autumn, so that the investment in civil engineering by private telecom operators does not stop. These equipment programmes will provide work for SMEs in the construction and public works sector and their employees throughout the country.

I also propose that we make the Public Domain properties for sale in the Domains portfolio available to bring international tourist hotel investors to invest in the renewal of the French tourist offer in order to capture world demand, particularly Asian demand. In this way, we could imagine the creation of French Paradores with private funds that would make companies and territories work.

I propose that we mobilise BPI funds to help tourism operators invest in new hotel chains, in particular to take over and restructure the city centre hotels that are disappearing in all the small towns in France, where 14,000 addresses have been lost over the last 20 years. These private investment projects without public impetus will put local businesses to work and recreate employment in these regions where unemployment has exploded.

I propose that we commit small but significant amounts of public investment in French ports so that they do not lose the battle with the North Sea ports, with a decline in their share of traffic. A port only exists and develops if it has a large and rich catchment area for importing and exporting manufactured goods. In order to boost the activity of our ports, investment in the improvement of rail services in the port of Marseille and Le Havre must be accelerated. These public investments will be very productive because they will create many jobs in and around our major ports.

I propose that we use the billions from the State's shareholdings to invest, as we did in PSA and Alstom, in the new healthcare companies that are tackling major diseases and that will soon become world leaders, creating jobs in France.

The State's public shareholdings thus become powerful levers for the drainage of private savings to companies destined to become entities of national and perhaps global utility.

BPI in its wake, selects the 40 SMEs, companies of the future CAC 40, into which it will inject capital and debt to generate rapid and accelerated growth and attract private investors.

Leadership with public funds creates private investment!
Already, the 34th industrial plan, entitled "Factory of the Future", presented as the most important by Louis Gallois, is a mini Marshall Plan of one billion for the SMEs that we want to help finance in the modernisation of their productive apparatus.
It is the Regions that will be called upon to select the companies, it is the two pilot companies in the plan, Fives and Dassault Systèmes, ranked 3rd innovative company worldwide, that will propose the diagnoses, it is the large loan and European funds that will finance the public investment in these thousands of SMEs, leading to a catching up of private investment. Our objective is to reach 3,000 SMEs in 3 years. The movement has already started, it must be amplified. I have just addressed myself personally to each regional councillor, present on the ground, so that he can take up this wave of modernisation of SMEs using public funds.

Above all, however, I propose that we invest massively in the knowledge infrastructure of the digital revolution.

 

If it is to be defended when it creates monopolies for the benefit of the giants of the global Internet that place us in a situation of dependency and digital colonisation, we should not be afraid of it. It is in our interest to seize it in order to obtain the best fruits for our jobs and growth.

Our strategy is, of course, to protect ourselves from its excesses, as France and Germany, Sigmar Gabriel and myself have asked the European Commission to do, with regard to Google, as we are asking with Axelle Lemaire in international forums in the ICAN case, just as I did when I took the matter to court in the Booking.com case, which is crushing our hotel business.

But our project is first and foremost to invest in sovereign alternatives: organizing European Big Data, securing the French Cloud, investing in new uses.

Together with the Minister of National Education, Benoît Hamon, we imagined investing massively in digital education in order to offer French children new teaching practices. This is the e-Education plan, which should mobilize about 700 million in public funding.

With Aurélie Filippetti, the Minister of Culture, we asked French audiovisual and digital operators to join forces to offer alternative platforms to the Anglo-Saxon offensives in culture and cinema. The creative industries are also formidable investment mobilisers. I am about to write a mission statement to the Chairman of Orange, asking him to be the flagship of our digital and sovereign revolution.

I propose that we give the mechanisms for the thermal renovation of buildings included in the energy transition an unprecedented scope.
These are, like the construction of Greater Paris, two great national causes that will change, in addition to the masses of money invested in them, the lives of the French people.

As you can see, the nation is mobilizing in all directions to boost growth and employment.
All its public, private and parapublic resources are engaged in this battle for growth.
Public money, which has become scarce, is leveraging private investment.
Rather than waiting for the European recovery of growth, I propose that we organise our own, based on an alliance of public and private investment, as a creative way of overcoming the budget shortfall.

This setting in motion of the economy through political action is the meaning of the mission of the Ministry of Economy.
No one here at Bercy expects growth from heaven.The Government is not sitting in a chair waiting for him like it waited for Godot. We decide to pick her up ourselves with our shovels and picks.

This is the meaning of this general mobilization of all the forces of the Nation for growth and to obtain the reduction of unemployment.

Competitive revolution, rejection of European austerity, stimulation of growth, fight against rents, innovation at all levels, these are the ingredients for the revival and recovery of the French economy.

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