2023 POLICY ROADMAP

French GDP is anticipated to have grown by around 1% in 2023, as private consumption was restored
and inflation fell, expected to be just under 6% for 2023. The French economy faced several challenges, including geopolitical uncertainties and rising energy costs. Bankruptcies among SMEs were up, with small businesses caught between declining consumer purchasing power and hence lower consumer spending, and higher costs of debt.

The French government has acted to limit energy price rises for businesses. Since 1 January 2023, the “Single Window” has opened, allowing new businesses to register faster and at lower cost.

2023 Framework Conditions Review1

Since 2021, the overall quality of the French entrepreneurial environment has been rated by its national experts as just sufficient, with its National Entrepreneurial Context Index (NECI) score falling to 5.0 from 5.1 the year before. However, larger falls elsewhere meant that France moved up the NECI ranking, from 18th to 12th. So far, France has avoided joining the sizeable group of North American and European high-income economies with an assessed entrepreneurial environment that has slipped to below sufficient since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2023 ,France scored as sufficient or better (score ≥5.0) in seven of the 13 Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions (EFCs). As with many economies, the highest score was for Physical Infrastructure (6.7), and the lowest score was for Entrepreneurial Education at School (2.4). Both these scores were lower in 2023 than in 2022, and the range between them in both years illustrates the variability of the quality of French EFCs. In fact, eight scores were lower, one the same and four higher in 2023, with the largest fall being for Government Policy: Support and Relevance and the largest increase for Research and Development Transfers. Indeed, both government policy and both finance EFCs scored lower, while Social and Cultural

Norms, and both ease-of-entry EFCs scored higher, no doubt helped by that “Single Window”.

Additional questions asked experts to rate the social support for women entrepreneurs, and their access
to resources compared to men. France scored a less than sufficient 4.4 for social support, ranked 15th, and a more than sufficient 5.2 for relative access to resources, ranked 18th.

2023 Entrepreneurial Activity Review

Just over one in five adults in France reported that their household income had fallen in 2023, down from three in 10 a year earlier.

Entrepreneurship had a reasonable public profile in France, with three in five adults knowing someone who had started their own business recently (joint second highest in Level A), and one in two adults considering themselves to have the skills and experience to start a business themselves or seeing good opportunities to do so locally — all three proportions having changed little from the year before.

The proportion of adults who were currently starting or running a new business was slightly up on the previous year, at a little over one in 10, with men more likely than women to be starting a new business: about four men starting a new business for every three women doing the same. Established Business Ownership was low at about one in 10, but still higher than a year earlier. So France had two people starting a new business for every person owning an established one.

None of the specified motivations were especially popular among new entrepreneurs, with making a difference in the world, and earning a living because jobs were scarce, each agreed by little over two in
four. New entrepreneurs were outward-looking, with more than one in three having customers beyond France. A similar proportion expected to use more digital technologies in the next six months. Despite nearly one in two of those starting or running a new business being solo entrepreneurs, with just one owner and no current employees, just over one in four new entrepreneurs in France expected to employ at least another six people over the next five years.

1 A brief description of the GEM approach is given in the footnote on p. 107.