(Washington Insider Magazine) – He was one of those major players in Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, swept away by the wave that withdrew his absolute majority from the presidential camp in the last legislative elections. The former general rapporteur for the budget at the National Assembly, Laurent Saint-Martin, has found a way to bounce back. He has just been appointed director general of Business France, the public body responsible for the international attractiveness of the country, according to the “Official Journal” of this Friday.
The former elected representative of Val-de-Marne therefore finds the economic world, he who had worked at the BPI and Euronext before entering the National Assembly in 2017. In recent months, his name had however been put forward for the future senatorial elections of September 2023, which must renew half of the High Assembly.
Former Campaign Treasurer
A political continuation which seemed logical for this ex-member of the PS – social-liberal Strauss-Kahn tendency – who had asserted himself during the quinquennium: after having been appointed in 2019 to the strategic post of general rapporteur for the Budget at the National Assembly , he had been head of the regional list in 2021 in Ile-de-France against Valérie Pécresse (the list will end 4th with 9.62% of the vote). During the last presidential election in 2022, he coordinated work around candidate Macron’s budget program and was above all bombarded as campaign treasurer – a strong sign of confidence.
This Edhec graduate ultimately preferred to move away from politics. She also benefits from the attention paid by the Head of State to the fate of certain great figures beaten during his first five-year term, such as Amélie de Montchalin, who has become French ambassador to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD ). .
At Business France – an organization resulting from the merger in 2015 of Ubifrance and the French Agency for International Investments – Laurent Saint-Martin will succeed Christophe Lecourtier, who had however been renewed in October 2021 for four years as general manager but who has since been appointed ambassador to Morocco.
The former deputy will find themes on which he has already worked a lot in the Finance Committee of the National Assembly: improving the attractiveness of France was one of the main axes of the economic policy of the first five-year term of Macron and has been frequently invoked to justify tax reforms (abolition of the ISF, creation of the “flat tax”, reduction in production taxes) and social reforms (in particular that of the Labor Code in 2017).
A More Complicated Context
Macronie believes that this policy has largely borne fruit. The latest data from Business France in the spring of 2022 showed that in 2021, 1,600 foreign investment decisions had been recorded in the territory. That is an increase of 32% compared to the very particular year 2020 marked by the Covid, but also of 9% compared to the record of 2019. In 2016, before the coming to power of Emmanuel Macron, the figure did not was only 1,100.
Laurent Saint-Martin nevertheless arrives in an undoubtedly more complicated context, characterized by a balkanization of globalization and a rise in protectionist tensions. At a time when industrial sovereignty is once again becoming a promising concept, competition is becoming increasingly fierce to attract industrial sites, often with billions of euros in subsidies. For its part, the government has announced a bill to promote green industry, and in 2023 begins a new phase of reducing production taxes by 8 billion.
This article is originally published on nouvelles-dujour.com