Seneweb covered Emmanuel Macron's video message to participants at BIG 2025, a major Bpifrance event this year focused on "truth." Unable to travel to Paris, the French president, who was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, delivered a speech that combined encouragement for entrepreneurs with a plea for a more competitive, sovereign, and protective Europe.

“You are the lifeblood and pride of our country.”

From the outset, the Head of State praised the energy of the business creators: "Bravo to all of you, you who are the entrepreneurs and who are at the same time the strength, the energy, the lifeblood, the pride of our country."

He regretted not being able to physically participate in the event, but wanted to "reiterate, as we begin the new season, the importance of what you do, what you represent, the energy you put into your businesses, because it is also energy that you put into the country."

Artificial intelligence at the heart of the European project

The president placed technological innovation, and AI in particular, at the center of his thinking. "The challenges are an extraordinary acceleration of the world in terms of technology," he emphasized.

He recalled the launch of the first French plan for artificial intelligence in 2018 and the emergence of "champions" such as "Mistral, Allen, Schist, Doctoli, Boundercraft and many others." The goal, according to him, is "to move faster and stronger in this area, with an even clearer European policy."

He also defended the need for a "true single European market for digital and AI," made possible by a Franco-German partnership "key to acceleration."

Competitiveness and simplification

Macron then called for administrative simplification on a European scale. "We need a very large European simplification plan," he insisted, calling for the creation of a "28th regime" to facilitate access for innovative companies to the entire continental market.

"Today, we have too many rules, we have put too much complexity into a world that is accelerating and simplifying," he regretted, deploring that the European domestic market remains "a fiction" in the face of 27 national regulations.

Protect without closing

Faced with global competition, the head of state defended a policy of reasoned protection. "This is not protectionism, it is pragmatism, it is legitimacy," he affirmed.

According to him, Europe can no longer remain "this market of 450 million consumers that is open to all winds." He cited the regulation of electric vehicles as an example and announced that he wanted to extend this type of measure to critical sectors such as "steel and chemicals," which are threatened by unfair competition.

“Entrepreneurship is a French word.”

In the most vibrant part of his speech, Emmanuel Macron extolled the value of entrepreneurship. "You don't just make profits. You enable families to live, and women and men to flourish in their projects," he declared.

"Entrepreneurship, for me, is the heart not only of economic life, but also of what the nation needs," he continued, before claiming to have coined the term. "It's a French word. The Anglo-Saxons think that this word is theirs. That's not true."

He concluded with a triple voluntarist salvo: "Long live innovation, long live the Republic, and long live France."