2020 Attractiveness Dashboard: strength of France’s assets

The 2020 edition of the dashboard first highlights “the solidity of France’s structural assets”. This is the first conclusion drawn by Business France, the national agency at the service of the internationalisation of the French economy, in its presentation of the new edition of this “decision-making tool”. Published in the context of the global health crisis, this tool has been produced in partnership with the Ministry of the Economy and constitutes an “objective reading grid of France's attractiveness”.

Ranked first in Europe for three indicators

With 140 indicators, the Attractiveness Dashboard brings together a set of economic data based on a comparison between 13 countries (11 European countries plus the United States and Japan). These indicators underline France’s economic solidity, which is based on its infrastructures, but also on other sectors such as “telecommunications, employee productivity, electricity costs, as well as its market potential, thanks to both its geographical position in Europe and the size of its domestic market”. It is these assets that have notably enabled France to become the leading host country for European investments, ahead of the United Kingdom and Germany. In the same way, Business France emphasises, in the “new global equation” that could now take shape, it is “particularly significant” that France is also the leading host country for research and development activities in Europe, as well as for industrial investment.

The “France Relance” plan in a pandemic context

Beyond this initial observation, the designers of these indicators insist on the fact that France “has demonstrated its ability to support its economic fabric and to quickly return to economic growth”. Indeed, after the first confinement at the beginning of 2020, “the rebound in activity in the third quarter was strong: +18.7% against +9% for OECD countries”. More specifically, “France has strengthened its actions towards the transformation of its economy”, notably with the implementation of the “France Relance” plan which “mobilises exceptional resources to support investment, innovation and the modernisation of industry”.

Other vectors of attractiveness

Several other factors also make France more attractive. This is particularly the case in three areas, such as:

• economy digitalisation. France spends 7 billion euros on digital technology and “has the highest fixed broadband penetration rate in Europe (44.1 subscribers per 100 inhabitants)”;
• fight against climate change. France stands out for the “originality of its energy mix”: it is the 2nd largest producer of renewable energies and less than 10% of its electricity production comes from “carbon-free resources”;
• cost of labour. The reforms undertaken have led to a clear reduction since 2013: “labour costs have risen less rapidly in France than in the euro zone average” (+9.8% in France compared with +14.4% in the euro zone).

And Business France concludes that in view of many other parameters, ‘in the period of uncertainty created by the pandemic and its economic consequences, France is today in a better position to reassure international investors’.