Bruno Le Maire announces that he wants to present a Pacte II bill in favor of businesses at the start of 2024

The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, announced on Thursday that he would present a Pacte II bill at the beginning of 2024 to enable the continued simplification of standards which hinder the growth of businesses, particularly the smallest and medium-sized.

“I want us to have a Pacte II law,” declared Bruno Le Maire during the Impact PME event organized by the Confédération des PME and BFM Business in Paris. After the Pacte I law adopted in 2019 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 which I hope to be able to present in the first months of 2024”, he added.

“When we put a spoke in the wheels of these SMEs, when we add rules, standards, obligations, paperwork, administrative constraints, it is absolutely unbearable!” exclaimed the number two of the government. The bill will be informed in particular by the proposals submitted during the consultations organized as part of the “Simplification Meetings”, launched by Bercy in mid-November.

These simplification proposals can be sent until December 29, notably 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,” said Bruno Le Maire.

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