PARIS: The French government has already announced measures to cut labour costs to make Paris more attractive to the banking sector post-Brexit following the election of President in May 2017. A former investment banker, the 40-year-old president has made labour rules more flexible and slashed , promising to further cut taxes on business revenue by 2022. Now EU expatriates in France will be able to opt out of compulsory contributions to the state pension scheme which make up about 2.3 percent of an employee’s gross salary. Prime Minister told investors on Monday that there would be 1,000 places available in the Paris region’s multilingual schools next September, while three new multilingual high schools would be created by 2021. The announcement came at a highly-publicised summit on Monday of global CEOs – including Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon – in Versailles, where the prime minister explained French reforms, in English, over lunch.
Macron joined the more than 140 CEOs in the evening, after unveiling a 300 million euro investment by Japanese carmaker Toyota in northern France. His labor market measures, perceived by many as weakening France’s hard-won worker protection rights, prompted a series of street protests last year. But France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, who is struggling to shake off a “president of the rich” tag, argues his economic policies will make France stronger to face globalisation.
