President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday urged 100 bosses of France’s biggest companies gathered at the Elysée to commit to taking on talent from disaffected suburbs where many of the country’s triumphant World Cup team grew up.
He also promised unions that his presidency was entering a “new phase” in which he would listen to them more closely after a year of whirlwind reform in which he largely ignored their protests.
The Elysée meeting came a day after hundreds of thousands took to the streets in wild celebrations at France’s 4-2 victory over Croatia in Moscow, in what the president called a “beautiful” show of unity.
Yet there are persistent complaints in France that sport remains perhaps the only area where such national unity prevails, and that citizens of the country’s multi-ethnic banlieues, its poor suburbs, are cut off and discriminated against.
Unemployment in many such areas is around 20 per cent, double the national average, while youth unemployment hovers at around 40 per cent, 15 points above the average, and poverty as high as 40 per cent.
Mr Macron was due to call on the bosses to take "immediate, visible commitments" to create jobs and apprenticeships in such areas, said his aides. Dubbed “the president of the rich” by his detractors, the French leader has been criticised for putting off a plan for the poor until after the World Cup.
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He has also received flak for binning a €50 billion plan released in May by former environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo to shake up 19 areas in the suburbs including the police, the justice system, education, and culture.
By way of explanation, he said there was no point announcing yet another new plan “between two white men who don’t live in these districts”.
Instead, he pledged non-budgeted measures from 30,000 job internships for 14-year olds to extra nursery places and blind testing in multinationals for discrimination when hiring.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Macron met all the heads of France’s unions to discuss reforms for the poor, pensions and unemployment benefit.
Union bosses are still licking their wounds after the government rushed through reforms of France’s labour code and railways in his first year in power, despite a three-month strike, while cutting business and wealth taxes.
Francois Asselin, the head of the CPME small companies, said Tuesday’s meeting was a “turning point”.
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"The president said: ‘In the first year of my presidency, I had to unblock certain situations, I went fast, that was my decision and I don’t apologise for it’," he said. "’Now I’m entering a new phase where I’ll have to rely more on social partners’.”
The government is due to push ahead with more economic and social reforms, including changes to unemployment insurance aimed at encouraging workers to take on new jobs, as well as a pension reform.
Philippe Martinez, head of the hardline CGT, said the president had “agreed that he had called the tune last year without listening to us much”, and hoped that he was prepared to “change social policy”.
While Right-wing support for the centrist Mr Macron remains strong, he lost support from the Left and aides have urged him to redress the balance.
But in a speech to both houses of parliament this month, he said: “If you want to share the cake, you’ve got to have a cake.”