Hollande courts foreign investors in Elysée meeting

French President François Hollande made a bid to clean up France's image with foreign investors when he met business leaders from 34 companies and sovereign wealth funds in Paris on Monday. On offer, a simplification of France's notorious bureaucracy and financial aid for start-ups. 

French President François Hollande meets some of the entrepreneurs he is trying to attract Reuters/Philippe Wojazer

Executives from some of the big names in international business - Volvo, Bosch, Siemens, Samsung, Intel, Nestlé and General Electric - as well as from sovereign funds Kuwait, Qatar and China heard Hollande promise to do better when it comes to making France attractive to foreign investors.

"France is afraid of nothing," he told them. "We are not afraid of opening our doors to the world. The only way to win market share and to build influence is to step out of one's home, to promote the excellence of one's products and resources abroad. That's what we do. And that means we must also welcome foreign businesses here, in France."

Faced with the effects of Europe's long economic crisis and regular business criticism of France's economic policies at home and abroad, Hollande said his government's efforts to reform the country's economy would become clear over the coming months.

The French president has stepped up efforts to attract investors in recent weeks, including 50-billion-euros-worth of cuts in public expenditure and payroll taxes and a much-publicised tour of Silicon Valley in the United States.

On Monday he promised to fuse two bodies that work with French exporters, streamline visa offers, customs tariffs and other administrative tasks and offered a grant of 25,000 euros to foreign start-ups.

France lost 77 per cent of its foreign investment last year, while neighbouring Germany saw its own performance quadruple, according to Unctad, although critics point out that the UN trade body often drastically revises its statistics.

The government prefers to cite figures from the French agency for foreign investment, AFII, which show 685 foreign decisions to invest in France in 2013, down from 693 in 2012, 698 in 2011 and 782 in 2010.

After the talks Hollande said France was not obsessed with protecting itself from foreign capital.

Hollande said he would gather business leaders for follow-up meetings every six months, in hopes that France's reforms evolve to their liking.

Most of the entrepreneurs present gave a polite welcome to Hollande's overtures.

Former foreign affairs minister Michèle Alliot-Marie of the right-wing UMP and far-right leader Marine Le Pen condfemned the meeting as a "PR operation".