Macron’s efforts to make France business friendly ‘wiped out,’ US group says

PARIS ― American companies operating in France believe President Emmanuel Macron’s years long quest to make his country more business friendly is in danger, a survey found.

The annual study by the American Chamber of Commerce in France found widespread pessimism among executives from the 140 U.S. companies with a footprint in France that were surveyed.

Marc-André Kamel, a partner at Bain & Company and a vice president of AmCham France, said most of the survey’s respondents respondents believe “that a huge part of the remarkable efforts that had been undertaken since 2017 have now been wiped out.”

“We are back to where we were 10 years ago in terms of France’s attractiveness,” Kamel said while presenting the findings Wednesday.

Only 17 percent of respondents said France had a positive economic outlook in the next two to three years, with the top concerns being the high cost of labor and complex French labor law and political instability, while 77 percent believe Macron won’t be able to deliver more reforms before his term ends next year.

Since taking office in 2017, Macron, a former investment banker, worked hard to dispel France’s reputation as a stifled, overtaxed bureaucratic abyss by cutting corporate taxes, eliminating red tape and courting major multinationals fleeing post-Brexit Britain.

France has regularly topped consultancy EY’s ranking of the EU investment destinations.

The French Trade Ministry, expecting the bleak results, tried to get ahead of the curve and play down the findings Tuesday. An official from the minister’s office stressed in a briefing to reporters that the AmCham survey was conducted between December and January, before France had passed a budget and while lawmakers were still debating major corporate tax hikes.

The monthslong deadlock over the budget concluded in early February when Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu successfully pushed fiscal plans for 2026 through parliament.