Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

French Pres. Macron Wants France To Be A ‘Start-Up Nation’ — Sound Familiar?

French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday that he would pursue business and technological policies to help France become a “start-up nation” — a phrase frequently used to describe Israel and its entrepreneurial high-tech culture.

“I want France to be a nation that works with and for start-ups, and a nation that thinks and moves like a start-up,” he said at a Paris tech conference, echoing language he used during his presidential campaign. To that end, he announced the creation of a “French Tech Visa,” a special residency permit for entrepreneurs and their families.

Macron’s new policy matches with his announcement after President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords earlier this month that France would welcome American scientists and innovators working on climate issues.

Macron is likely familiar with Israel’s reputation for high-tech wizardry — as French Jewish leaders Arié Bensemhoun and David Siegel noted in the Forward last month, Macron visited Israel in 2015 while serving as France’s economy minister. During the trip, they wrote, he “also brought dozens of top French industrial executives, and shared with the delegation many words of high praise for Israel as the ‘Start-Up Nation.’”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter @aidenpink.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.