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Macron Turns to Former Taxi Driver to Save French Shopkeepers

When a crisis forced Emmanuel Macron to rethink his economic philosophy, he recruited a former cabbie.

Macron Turns to Former Taxi Driver to Save French Shopkeepers
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon,. (Photographer: Hasan Shaaban/Bloomberg)

When a crisis forced Emmanuel Macron to rethink his economic philosophy, he recruited a former cabbie.

An entrepreneur who failed his high-school diploma, 67-year-old Alain Griset has been thrust into the central role of applying the policies of the elite-educated investment-banker-turned-president. Gone is Macron’s startup nation mantra and his promise to loosen the shackles of a heavy state.

Griset’s mission as minister for small and mid-sized companies is instead to ensure France’s economic backbone of mom-and-pop firms survive the Covid crisis.

“I was appointed to deliver a message to the country’s 3 million entrepreneurs: You matter,” Griset said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “The President’s message is: You are in the regions, you train people, you give them jobs, you count for me. So here’s a minister for you.”

Macron Turns to Former Taxi Driver to Save French Shopkeepers

Macron came to power with an ambitious plan to accelerate the transformation he had initiated as minister of economy and industry, by cutting red tape and public expenses while encouraging tech startups to blossom. But the coronavirus pandemic forced him to focus on fire-fighting, handing out state aid, offering hundreds of billions of euros in loan guarantees and effectively nationalizing private payrolls with France’s emergency furlough program.

Just before appointing Griset in July’s broader government shuffle, and facing an economic meltdown with two years until elections, the president said both he and the French must reinvent themselves.

Macron and Griset haven’t always seen eye-to-eye.

When the president was minister, Griset opposed his signature reform — the so-called Macron Law — that aimed to rewrite France’s labor code and pick apart the monopolies of notaries, bailiffs and other professions. The approach clashed with the interests Griset represented as head of a national taxi union and a senior member of the chamber of artisans.

“I’m not against reform, but reform doesn’t mean you smash everything,” said Griset, 25 years Macron’s senior. “We haven’t always agreed on these topics but that didn’t stop him making me minister.”

Macron Turns to Former Taxi Driver to Save French Shopkeepers

The government has needed to be inventive during the pandemic in defending many of the businesses and freelancers championed by Griset as they fall through the cracks between the broad loan guarantees and furlough programs tailored to employees on traditional work contracts. It has regularly boosted a so-called ‘solidarity fund’ to compensate for the lost revenues of small business owners from Parisian bistrots, to florists, taxi drivers, and developers.

More than 9 out of 10 businesses in France employ fewer than 20 people, according to Griset, making small companies the core of the economy and an important political constituency.

Macron Turns to Former Taxi Driver to Save French Shopkeepers

“If we had told the French: Stay home but you won’t get paid, what would have happened? We’d have had vests in every color, not just yellow,” he said, referring to the grassroots movement for social justice that started in 2018.

Griset says he works 18 to 19 hours a day, meeting dozens of people and sleeping in his apartment at the ministry, and part of his job is to review how businesses affected by measures to curb the epidemic can transform themselves – he cited nightclubs reopening as bowling alleys.

Aside from crisis measures, Griset is working on a plan to improve the business environment for the self-employed by streamlining tax administration and simplifying legal statutes.

The businessman who built up a taxi service from scratch is also considering re-taking the high school diploma. He joins a call by Macron, who graduated from France’s ultra elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, to move away from a society where one exam can get you employment for life.

“My appointment raises hopes among entrepreneurs,” he said. “My goal is not to disappoint them.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.