He came on stage to the tune of “I will survive”. The pessimists saw in it a whole symbol: that of a moribund tricolor economy; optimists remembered the victory of the Blues in 1998 and hoped for "a bright economic tomorrow". Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, by opening this Wednesday afternoon, on the lawn of the Longchamp racecourse, the Medef summer university - called “Renaissance des entreprises de France” (the “REF20”) - ranked among the next to those who see the glass half full.
"I have come to deliver a message of optimism to you, at a time when all economists predict business failures and mass unemployment," he thundered straight away. In front of him, in the gallery, hard to tell if the business leaders were smiling again - they all wore a mask! - but many of them responded. 4,500 people have registered for the “REF20”, ie 25% more members compared to last year's edition.
The unemployment figures for July, which fell that same day and which let us hope for better days (- 4.1% in category A, the unemployed without any activity), even validated Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux's tribute to the previous government team : "Let's give Edouard back what is Edouard, let's recognize that the government has done the job!" "But" beware of trompe-l'oeil effects ", we temper as far as the Ministry of the Economy, where the prospect of a difficult return to the job market worries ...
Castex surprises
Then, the time has come to give the floor to Jean Castex. Aware of having generated a lot of frustration among the bosses by delaying the announcement of the recovery plan of 100 billion euros, the Prime Minister had come with some (small) surprises.
VIDEO. Partial unemployment extended "until November 1," says Castex
The current conditions of partial unemployment benefit will be maintained "at least until November 1" whereas they were to be revised downwards on October 1, he said. The sectors most in difficulty (tourism, culture, sport, events), for their part, "will retain access to partial activity until the end of the year" under current conditions.
Finally, the rules concerning the obligation to wear a mask in companies from September 1 "will be clarified depending on the nature of the activity, the configuration of the premises and the epidemic circulation of the virus" on the territory of the company.
"The state gives us no flower! "
On target! "I wasn't expecting much from the speech," says Emilie Legoff, the manager of a Lyon SME software publisher. But I was very sensitive to the pragmatism shown by Jean Castex, in particular on the question of masks. "And to add:" Usually, the government tends to forget that Paris is not France. There, the Prime Minister promised money for the territories and small businesses ”. “At least a quarter” of the planned 100 billion euros will thus benefit VSEs and SMEs, insisted Jean Castex.
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Others, however, greeted the announcements with much more severity. “The state puts forward guaranteed loans, but their rates are those of the market, plague a start-up boss. We are not given any flowers! "Wink -" I'm talking to you off because I responded to a public call for tenders. Then a new banderilla: “In the big grub of the recovery plan, the government is heating up billions that had already been in the ecosystem of business aid for a long time. "
But the economic future then, in the end? Hunt the natural, it comes back at a gallop, in the alleys of Longchamp, several entrepreneurs finally preferred to leave it ... only to themselves. “In three months, our company has lost half of its turnover, insisted Cyril Laurent, marketing director of Pixminds, a manufacturer of computer accessories based in Chambéry (Savoie). So thank you for partial unemployment and guaranteed loans, thank you for the support of our partner banks, but we also had to rely on ourselves, the motivation and investment of our employees. "