Macron urges business to hire talent from ‘World Cup banlieues’

EMMANUEL MACRON urged 100 bosses of France’s biggest companies gathered at the Elysée to commit to taking on talent from disaffected suburbs where many of the country’s triumphant World Cup team grew up.

The French president also promised unions yesterday that his presidency was entering a “new phase” in which he would listen to them more closely after a year of whirlwind reform in which he largely ignored their protests.

The Elysée meeting came a day after hundreds of thousands took to the streets in wild celebrations at France’s 4-2 victory over Croatia in Moscow, in what the president called a “beautiful” show of unity.

Yet there are persistent complaints in France that sport remains perhaps the only area where such national unity prevails, and that citizens of the country’s multi-ethnic banlieues – its poor suburbs – are discriminated against.

Unemployment in many such areas is around 20 per cent, double the national average, while youth unemployment hovers at around 40 per cent, 15 points above the average, and poverty is as high as 40 per cent.

Mr Macron was due to call on the bosses to take “immediate, visible commitments” to create jobs and apprenticeships in such areas, said his aides. Dubbed “the president of the rich” by his detractors, the French leader has been criticised for putting off a plan for the poor until after the World Cup.

He has also been criticised for rejecting a €50billion plan by Jean-louis Borloo, a former environment minister, to shake up 19 areas in the suburbs including the police, the justice system, education and culture. Mr Macron said there was no point announcing yet another new plan “between two white men who don’t live in these districts”.

Instead, he pledged non-budgeted measures, including 30,000 job internships for 14-year olds, extra nursery places and blind testing in multinationals for discrimination when hiring.