MAY 2018 FORBES ASIA | 33new employment laws, making it easier to hire—and ire. To add
some honey to the medicine, he’s also put $18 billion into profes-
sional retraining over the next ive years, including a controversial
extension of unemployment insurance for France’s growing num-
ber of self-employed and small business owners. He’s slashing at
taxes on wealth, capital gains and worker compensation, and “sim-
plifying everything.”
How far is Macron willing to go? He reveals to Forbes that next
year he intends to permanently end France’s notorious 30% “exit
tax” on entrepreneurs who try to take money out of France—a tre-
mendous disincentive for foreigners to start a business there and a
strong incentive for French citizens to launch elsewhere. In doing
so, he’s moving in the opposite direction of President Trump, who
has gleefully threatened American companies who expand abroad
and promised subsidies for those who stay.
“People are free to invest where they want,” says Macron. “If you
want to get married, you should not explain to your partner, ‘If you
marry me, you will not be free to divorce.’ I’m not so sure it is the
best way to have a lady or a man who loves. So I’m for being free to
get married and free to divorce.”
hese enlightened policies come just in time. Demographical-
ly, France will surpass Germany as Europe’s most populous coun-
try within this generation, and it’s an educated lot, rating with the
Continent’s best educated, with a slew of elite engineering schools
to boot. “France is extremely well-positioned from a growth per-
spective,” says Jonas Prising, CEO of ManpowerGroup. At the