French press review 17 February 2014

Hollande courts the multinationals. France triumphs at Sochi.

French business is in the spotlight this morning, as President François Hollande, just back from his meet and greet in the United States, prepares to explain to the bosses of 34 huge multinationals based here in France that this really is a good place to work, despite high levels of taxation and a battery of labour laws.

The 34 dudes who'll show up at the Elysée Palace later this morning represent 850 billion euros in annual turnover between them and currently employ more than 100,000 French people. Right-wing Le Figaro says their message to the president will simply be to loosen up or lose out.

France last year lost 77 per cent of its foreign direct investment, while Germany was adding nearly 400 per cent over the same 12 months, Le Figaro says.

Tabloid Le Parisien insists that France has a lot going for it - a well-trained work force, great infrastructure, world-leading brands in key sectors like aviation, luxury goods, food processing and energy. But such advantages do come at a cost: 46 per cent of company profits are currently swallowed by taxation, charges and social deductions; foreigners (and some locals) complain that employment legislation is rigid, impenetrable and unstable; salaries are high; and there's a sense that France is strike-prone, never really having recovered from the 1789 revolution.

Business paper Les Echos hopes that Hollande will use today's meeting with the rich and powerful to advance his project of making peace with big business.

But Le Figaro's editorial asks how much of today's fine talk will actually translate into tangible change. The right-wing daily laments the fact that recently promised changes on the employment front have been watered down or abandoned. In fact, whinges Le Figaro, it's all just been hot air, promises, fairy dust. And that won't work with the globe-trotting captains of industry, who know exactly how much it costs to do business elsewhere.

François Hollande will have seen the golden horizon in Silicon Valley; it's now up to him to convince his party colleagues that fundamental change is necessary unless France wants to become an industrial and economic backwater.

At least French sport is doing well. There are five new Olympic bronze medalists and a world record-holder - in the pole vault - on the front page of sports daily L'Equipe.

Four of the bronze medals were won yesterday in Sochi in the Nordic skiing 10km relay, an event which proved too much for the French team at the last two Olympics, in Turin and Vancouver, where they finished fourth.

The world record goes to Renaud Lavillenie, the man who on Saturday vaulted six metres, 16 centimetres, beating Sergei Bubka's 21-year mark by one centimetre.