PARIS (Reuters) – France will announce on Monday a total of 13 billion euros in foreign investment promises on the occasion of the sixth edition of the “Choose France” summit, during which Emmanuel Macron will once again deploy the pomp of the Palace of Versailles to receive leaders of major international companies.

This amount, communicated on Sunday by the Elysée, is the highest since the first edition, in 2018, of this event, which the President of the Republic intends to testify to the attractiveness of France and the relevance of its choices of economic policy. These 28 investment promises should generate 8,000 jobs.

The symbolic significance is all the stronger this year as this event comes after months of strong protest against the pension reform pushing back by two years, to 64, the start of the legal age.

The main investment of this “Choose France” 2023 is the one already announced on Friday during a visit by the Head of State to Dunkirk, a project of 5.2 billion euros and 3,000 jobs carried by the Taiwanese group ProLogium for a gigafactory of solid-state electric batteries in Dunkirk.

Another announcement already made during this trip to the North, the Chinese XTC, producer of materials for batteries, has signed joint venture agreements with the French Orano for the production of precursors and cathodes with an investment of 1.5 billion euros in Dunkirk.

Among the other investments announced as part of this event in Versailles, according to the Elysée, the Swedish Ikea will strengthen its logistics capacities by investing 906 million euros in France between 2023 and 2026; the pharmaceutical laboratory Pfizer plans to invest more than 500 million euros in France over the same period, particularly in the field of oncology, antivirals and packaging; or the American bank Morgan Stanley plans to create 200 new jobs in Paris by 2025.

Emmanuel Macron should also announce the birth in 2025 of a photovoltaic plant near Sarreguemines (Moselle). By 2027, 1,700 jobs will be created there for an investment of 710 million euros.

“For years, we have subsidized photovoltaic panels made at the end of the world, there, we will have photovoltaic panels ‘made in France’, as we will have batteries ‘made in France’, electric cars ‘made in France’ It’s concrete ecology. We’re going to manufacture the products that we’re going to consume in France. We’re going to create jobs,” the Minister of Reindustrialisation, Roland Lescure, told franceinfo on Sunday about this. project.

(Report Leigh Thomas, with Elizabeth Pineau, Bertrand Boucey)

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