A first oral contest before 2027. The Meeting of Entrepreneurs of France (REF), which opens on Wednesday August 26 at the Roland-Garros stadium, will offer a debate on Thursday between seven candidates for the presidential election, who will discuss their ideas for the economy.
Eight months before the presidential election, the annual Medef meeting takes on a particularly political dimension this year.
The debate will bring together Gabriel Attal, Raphaël Glucksmann, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Édouard Philippe, Bruno Retailleau and Marine Tondelier on the center court, where the event has been held since last year.
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The candidates will answer questions from five SME managers drawn up from a consultation carried out over three months with 66,000 business leaders, the results of which Medef published on Tuesday.
We discover that, without even being given a possible winner, only 17% of the business leaders surveyed say they are optimistic (including 2% very optimistic) regarding the effects of the next president’s economic policy, and 82% are pessimistic, including 29% very pessimistic.
Asked what seems to them to be a priority during the next five-year term, 81% cite the reindustrialization of the country, 75% the simplification of standards, 83% the reduction of taxation, 75% the reduction of debt and public spending.
That “each candidate specifies what he intends to propose”
Through this exercise, the employers’ organization hopes to impose its themes in the presidential debate. In a press release published Tuesday, Medef estimated that “the lessons of this consultation must find a concrete translation in the presidential campaign”. He expects “each candidate to specify what he intends to propose to restore the country’s economy and what place he intends to give to businesses.”
“The economic debate can no longer have as its sole horizon new tax increases and ever more constraints for businesses,” underlines the movement. On the contrary, “it must relate to the conditions allowing companies to plan, invest, innovate, recruit and develop in France”.
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President Patrick Martin, elected in 2023, is regularly annoyed to see companies being, according to him, the “adjustment variable” of the budget, due to lack of a majority in the National Assembly since 2024.
Under his leadership, the first employers’ movement has sought to position itself as an actor in the public debate, well beyond just the demands of companies, in recent years. It multiplies proposals and quantified work on public finances, health, youth employment, social protection and demography.
“Putting work back at the heart of our collective ambition”
This strategy reflects a desire to “bring rationality back into the debate”, as Patrick Martin regularly says, who does not hide the fact that political leaders are too focused on the short term and insufficiently attentive to the issues of competitiveness, public debt or reindustrialization.
The theme chosen this year, “courage”, is part of this logic. In an interview with La Tribune on Sunday, Patrick Martin estimated this weekend that “courage does not consist in changing everything so that nothing changes”, but in telling the French that preserving the social model requires “putting work back at the heart of our collective ambition”.
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In addition to this presidential debate, the REF will notably welcome the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the Minister of the Economy Roland Lescure and the executive director of Stellantis, Antonio Filosa.
Other possible or declared presidential candidates will appear in round tables or discussions (Fabien Roussel, David Lisnard, Bruno Le Maire, Élisabeth Borne, Philippe Brun, Xavier Bertrand).
But, in this REF whose attendance promises to be record, they will not be entitled to the big debate. “You cannot put all the potential or declared candidates on the same stage, choices had to be made,” we explain to Medef.
With AFP
