SUMMARY
Against a particularly unstable geopolitical and commercial backdrop, in 2025 France proved remarkably attractive to foreign investors. In 2025, Business France recorded 1,878 investment decisions, which are expected to create or maintain 47,734 jobs in France. The combination of an economy relatively protected from external shocks, with contained inflation, a decarbonized energy mix and solid infrastructure seems to have provided an effective shield against the worldwide decline in international investment.
Keywords: Territorial attractiveness, agri-food, chemicals, decarbonation, jobs, renewable energies, France 2030, foreign direct investment, FDI, logistics, digital, points of sale, research and development, R&D, reindustrialization, company takeovers, health, France.
Illustration: © Business France
Key findings and limitations
With 833 projects, industry is one of the mainstays of these investments (food processing, automotive, chemicals, healthcare, etc.), along with logistics (91 projects) and retail (522 new outlets). Nearly half of all projects target towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, accounting for 59% of projected jobs. In the industrial sector alone, 59% of projects and 64% of jobs were aimed at these municipalities. 72% of projects, 56% of jobs and 60% of project companies are ofEuropean origin. While American investors are less present than in 2024, German, Italian and Asian investors (China, Japan and India, particularly for company takeovers) illustrate the attractiveness of the French economy.
The report highlights the convergence between foreign investment and the priorities of the France 2030 plan (465 projects are in line with its strategic orientations). The cloud,AI and quantum technology sectors (91 projects, 3,100 jobs), healthcare (82 projects, 2,000 jobs), decarbonized mobility (53 projects, 2,150 jobs) and renewable energies (52 projects, 1,700 jobs) are the main beneficiaries. Siemens Energy, for example, is reinvesting €200 million in its Le Havre site for marine wind turbines, while Aiforia Technologies (Finland) is creating a European medical AI hub in Paris. In addition, almost 70 projects are explicitly aimed at decarbonizing industrial sites, concentrated in the agri-food, glass-wood-paper, automotive and chemical sectors.
While the report is well documented, thanks to the agency's territorial and international network, a few limitations deserve to be highlighted. On the one hand, the report measures decisions and projections, not achievements: the actual realization of the jobs announced is not guaranteed, and the gap between projected jobs and jobs actually created is not documented. Furthermore, the absence of data on divestments and closures of foreign sites in France makes it impossible to assess the net balance of foreign-controlled jobs. Finally, the qualitative dimension of jobs (remuneration, working conditions, long-term anchoring) is not addressed.
