Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: MARTIN BERTRAND / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 20:08 p.m., November 30, 2023

Bruno Le Maire announced on Thursday his intention to present, at the beginning of 2024, a Pact II bill to allow the simplification of standards that hinder the growth of companies to continue. The minister said he was "sure that there will be a majority" in Parliament to vote for this second version.

The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, announced on Thursday that he wants to present a Pact II bill in early 2024 to allow the further simplification of standards that hinder the growth of companies, especially the smallest and medium-sized ones. "I want us to have a Pacte II law," Le Maire said at the SME Impact event organised by the Confederation of SMEs (CPME) and BFM Business in Paris.

After the first Pacte law adopted in 2019 and which made it possible to simplify the rules "a lot", "I want there to be a second step forward in simplification with a Pacte II law that I hope to be able to present in the first months of 2024", he said. "When you put a spanner in the works of these SMEs, when you add rules, standards, obligations, paperwork, administrative constraints, it's absolutely unbearable!" exclaimed the government's number two.

"In the coming months"

The draft law will be fed in particular by the proposals submitted during the consultations organised as part of the "Simplification Meetings", launched by Bercy in mid-November. These simplification proposals can be sent until 29 December, in particular online at simplification.make.org. "We already have 300,000 voters and thousands of proposals. I think we will have half a million voters by the time the site closes," Le Maire said.

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As for the first Pacte law, the minister said he was "sure that there will be a majority" in Parliament to vote for this second version. "You really have to be a politician who is totally out of touch with the business world, SMEs and small businesses, not to understand that one of the first demands of a business leader today is that we stop bothering him and make his life easier," he told an audience of business leaders. "In the coming months", Bruno Le Maire also said he was "looking at how we can reduce the gap between gross and net (salary)", as well as "the weight of contributions".