Emmanuel Macron praises entrepreneurs’ “taste for risk and the future”

Emmanuel Macron praised entrepreneurs' "taste for risk and the future" in Paris on Thursday, and insisted that if France had not won "all the battles", it was necessary to continue to "modernize" it. “They wanted us to believe that the word entrepreneur was an Anglo-Saxon word. It’s a French word that the Anglo-Saxons took from us,” he said during a Bpifrance Inno Génération (BIG) meeting, a European gathering dedicated to entrepreneurs.

“What you have imposed on the landscape of the country in ten years is the taste for risk and it is the taste for the future,” he assured, in a very offensive speech, in front of a won over audience. The head of state made no allusion to the high school students' movement marked by new demonstrations on Thursday, and by a call for a new day of mobilization on Tuesday, October 13.

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“It is difficult to say that we live in an exciting world,” he simply said, referring to the “return of crises in Europe.” Emmanuel Macron, who will leave the Élysée next May, also engaged in an exercise of self-satisfaction on the results of his economic and social policy since 2017.

“Do not give in to defeatism”

He praised a “strong energy model, the most carbon-free in Europe”, “more than two and a half million jobs recreated” or even the country “which creates the most start-ups”, “which creates data centers”. “That’s what investing is all about. It’s not a bad word, investing (..) It’s to say, I believe more in tomorrow than in today,” insisted Emmanuel Macron. “At the moment when political and economic elites, where large groups, start-ups, ETIs (mid-sized companies), start to say to themselves “tomorrow is terrible and I no longer believe in it”, they have already lost”, he insisted, reiterating his call not to “give in to defeatism”.

Drawing the parallel with France, he conceded: “Yes, we have weaknesses. Our public finances, a social model that is not funded enough. “That doesn't mean you have to stay in bed and you're done for. We have to fight, we have to leave with energy.” “Have we not tried to fight over this in recent years? Yes. Have we won all the battles? No. But we have to leave again. You have to convince. We must show that it must be modernized. “A country that is aging is also an opportunity,” he said, a year after the suspension of the emblematic pension reform.