French Investments Research Articles

Serbia and France: the special relationship?

What is the relationship between the European Union and the Western Balkans, and Serbia in particular? The author reviews the process of accession of the Western Balkan countries (with a focus on Serbia) to the European Union, but also the geopolitical stakes in this region, which is sought after by external actors such as China and Russia, and which the European Union should pay more attention in order to strengthen its strategic autonomy. The EU needs to take a bold stance in the Western Balkans and France wants to be at the forefront. European actors must show future member states that the door to full membership is indeed open, but only if they can truly embrace democratic values. In his analysis, the author writes about Serbia's path towards EU integration through an increasingly close relationship with France. The current situation in Serbia is rather complex. Will it continue with its "hamster in the wheel" approach, where the result is always expected to be the same, or should Serbia adopt a different approach for the future? As concerns Serbia, France will certainly continue to insist on economic cooperation and the improvement of French investments in Serbia. They will also take a stand against damaging foreign influences which they believe could potentially destabilize the region and are fundamentally at cross purposes with the policy favored by the European Union.

“A Colony of Alien Capital”: French Investments, Polish Identity, and a Story of Murder in 1930s Warsaw

This article explores public reactions to a murder of a foreign managing director running a French-owned textile factory in interwar Poland. The 1932 killing provoked an intense discussion in the press, which sheds light on Polish identity and narrative strategies used by the elites to rationalize the consequences of Poland's peripheral economic status. The study is based on discourse analysis of over 200 press articles. I argue that commentators saw the killing as the result of French policies in the factory, and interpreted these in turn as the result of either the Polish government's negligence, influenced by Paris's diplomats, or of global capitalism. The most dramatic arguments framed French policies in Żyrardów as a form of colonialism or slavery. This framing was based on the journalists’ perception of French actions as transgressions of two imagined hierarchies: a geo-racial division of the world, and the local hierarchy of labor.

Imbalanced Development of Transport Infrastructure in Anglo-French Cameroons and Its Impact on the Political Evolution of the Territories, 1916-2022

This paper seeks to evaluate the impacts of the uneven development of transport infrastructure in former British Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun on the political evolution of both entities. It investigates the rationale behind the introduction of modern transport and communication systems in Cameroon by various colonial administrations, and the spatial differences of the infrastructure development, so as to ascertain the role of the imperialists in creating the transport problem plaguing the country. Exploring primary and secondary historical sources, this write-up argues that the desire to ease the evacuation of tropical raw materials by German planters and merchants engendered the development of the transport system in Kamerun. Conversely, the Anglo-French compelled by some key provisions in the Mandate and Trusteeship Agreements did not all ensure the socio-economic development of their respective spheres of influence in the former German Protectorate. Consequently, French investments created disparity in the transport set-up first within Cameroun, as it was concentrated on the port city of Douala and its environs, and with the British Southern Cameroons, which remained largely neglected. It concludes that this apparent British disregard for the improvement on the transport groundwork in her own sector, later influenced the political debate during the independence struggle, as some Southern Cameroonians advocated for the (re)unification option simply to benefit from the development guarantees from leading French Camerounians. However, such assurances hardly came to fruition leaving many Anglophones hapless within the post-independent state. In summary, the article recommends an all-encompassing development policy of transport infrastructure to be adopted by the government of Cameroon, so that it can hearken to the aspirations of former Southern Cameroonians.

Environmental impacts of pre/during and post-lockdown periods on prominent air pollutants in France.

The nationwide lockdown inflicted by the global COVID-19 disease epidemic and imposed during 57 days in France was not immune to fluctuations in atmospheric pollutant concentrations. A whole range of human activities has been suspended Monday 17 March 2020 in all French regions. Since then experiments are progressing to reflect the effectiveness of reduced emissions. In this paper, we looked at variations of pollutants prior to, during and after containment period. In a first step, we proved through experiments on eight air pollutants, how all daily maximum pollutants concentration have decreased during containment phase, apart from the ozone pollutant O3. This Ozone pollutant has indeed increased by 27.19% during lockdown period and kept growing by 21.35% as well right after deconfinement. Indeed, the maximum daily concentrations detected in different regions of France, have decreased by 18.18%, 37.14%, 20.36%, 9.28%, 44.38%, 5.1% and 44.38%, respectively, for the pollutants SO2, NO2, CO, C6H6, NOX, PM2.5 and PM10. Declining levels of other pollutants, however, were not sustained after deconfinement for NO2, NOX and PM10. We have reinforced these findings by classifying each pollutant according to the ATMO and AQI indexes, to better visualize their criticality throughout the three lockdown phases (Pre/During/Post). The family of air pollutant variables with their associated geographical sources was thereafter exploited to justify their approximate contribution to the daily mortality rates associated to COVID-19 across all French regions. However, more thorough study is still in progress to validate this finding. Finally, coming up to the abrupt changes in airborne pollutants experienced in this period, a question about future climate crisis was raised again. Whereby a weighting study has shown the current and very short-term French scenario (Status-Quo) in view of its current environmental path, the political responses made towards future climate change crisis and French investments done in this sense.

УКРАЇНА У ФРАНЦУЗЬКОМУ ФОКУСІ: ПОЗИЦІЯ ПАРИЖА

The main objective of the study is to analyze France's position on contemporary French-Ukrainian relations, the status of the Crimea and the reintegration of the Donbas. Concerning methodology the systematic method was used for comprehensive studying of French approaches to problematic issues, such as the reintegration of the Donbas, the annexation of Crimea, and the revitalization of French investment in Ukraine. A comparative analysis of the statements of French MP V. Faure-Muntian and Ukrainian MP O. Voloshyn reveals certain elements of the information war. The official position of France on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict 2014–2020 was analyzed. The hypothetical potential of Ukraine as a market for France and the main obstacle for French investments – corruption – has been clarified. It was proved that despite the fact that Ukraine's relations with France are not strategic, they have entered into a phase of strengthening their importance for Ukraine through the participation of France in the Normandy format, the French position on Russia and sanctions against that state and such events as France’s joining to signatories of the Budapest Memorandum and Brexit, through which France becomes the only nuclear country in the EU. The conclusion is drawn about the unpredictability of France's long-term strategy for Ukraine because of its significant dependence on the concept of the French president, who defines foreign and defence policy, and the results of the presidential race are unpredictable enough, as proved by the recent presidential elections in 2017. Recommendations underline the urgency of overcoming corruption; its success will determine French–Ukrainian economic relations. The priority is given to tracking elements of the information war and responding immediately, and if possible preventing it by spreading information more widely about Ukraine in France. It is highlighted the expediency of acquainting the French with the achievements of Ukraine in the field of culture and art that is one of the methods for the best presentation of the positives of Ukraine in France.

Ukrainian-French political science discourse in the mirror of the «audit of foreign policy of Ukraine»

A new phenomenon in Ukrainian political science was the cycle of studies of the Institute of World Policy (Kyiv) «Foreign Policy Audit of Ukraine». The work is supported by several international foundations and organizations using the methodology of the political index (BISS), previously tested by the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. Noting the positive results of the application of this methodology by an international research team — a clearly indicated value for practical policy, the author pointed to a number of specific limitations. In particular, the widespread use of quantitative methods of political sociology is not provided with sufficient protection against the possibility of subjective interpretation of data. The main role in the article play issues of the Ukrainian-French discourse presented in the article «Foreign Policy Audit: Ukraine-France. Discussion Note» created by a group of specialists from France and Ukraine. It is a meaningful system of political science analysis. After presentation of this material by the Institute with the participation of the French ambassador to Ukraine Isabel Dumont, the latter told the press that Ukraine is now included in the top 5 of foreign policy priorities of her country. Such an optimistic statement gives a hope for a more favorable climate for the restoration of full-scale cooperation and attraction of new scientific forces for the study of this issue. The discussion note on the basis of reach factual material shows the condition of interstate cooperation and public opinion, as well as the inconsistency of the positions of both sides in assessing the Ukrainian political crisis that has become one of the central themes of European politics since 2013. The dual nature of French policy varies between the desire to support Ukraine and the unwillingness to complicate relations with Russia. Participation of France in resolving of the Ukrainian crisis within the Normandy Format is criticized by authors of the Note for its inertia and orientation on German policy. On their opinion the position of Ukraine is declarative and is not convincing enough for French public opinion. Accepting the invitation to the discussion the author critically evaluates the final recommendations of the Note which shows an obvious tendency towards French interests the value of some of them is highly questionable for the Ukrainian side (for example, participation in French foreign military operations, like Georgia). The author also disagrees with the statements that before the creation of the group in the Normandy Format France did not have a specific policy towards Ukraine. This also shows a shortage of the chosen methodology which needs additions from the field of historical experience. The author gives a short outline of the historical retrospective of Ukrainian-French relations emphasizing their steady nature and constant growth in both the political and economic spheres up to 2013. At the same time, an unprecedented leap was made between 2005 and 2012 in the sphere of economic cooperation. A factor analysis of this phenomenon shows that French investments in Ukraine just for the «seven-year plan» soared by 30 (!) Times, but in 2012 this growth suddenly stopped. There are known demarches of French ambassadors to the Ukrainian government, but the genuine reasons for this question still require research. Since 2014, the intensity of political contacts at the highest level between the two countries has also rocketed to an unprecedented level, but this has not affected the stabilization of economic relations which have been rolled back for more than a decade. In conclusion, the author notes that the «Foreign Policy Audit of Ukraine» will make a positive contribution to the development of domestic political science and to increase the effectiveness of the state’s activities in the international arena. In the context of the Ukrainian-French discourse of the actual problem the creation of an updated model of cooperation is seen as the previous model built according to the «Road Map» programs, despite being effective it does not work in modern conditions and there is still no other program of this level.

The French Pacific Division and the Chincha Islands War (1864–7)

The Chincha Islands War, fought between Spain and its former colonies of Peru and Chile from 1864 to 1866, took place while France was trying to impose an Austrian emperor on Mexico with the growing concern that the United States might intervene in both conflicts. Threatening French investments and interests in the two Latin American countries, the war was occasionally monitored by nine French warships sailing from France to the western Mexican coast or returning back. Therefore, French reports give another perspective on a little known confrontation in a complex international environment. As representatives of a neutral power with interests at stake, French officers relied on experience and guts to analyse the conflict and influence the protagonists while the Pacific Division Admiral authorized them to report directly to the Marine Minister. This little war revealed once more the geopolitical abilities of multitasking naval officers, from a junior lieutenant who strongly protested the bombardment of Valparaiso and British passivity to a seasoned but distant rear admiral who felt that Latin American Republics had to be confronted on occasions to ensure that they would give a fair treatment to foreign nationals and businesses in the future.

ПРЯМІ ІНОЗЕМНІ ФРАНЦУЗЬКІ ІНВЕСТИЦІЇ В УКРАЇНУ

The paper deals with the place of French investments in Ukraine in the XXIst Century. It wishes to determinate how far France has been taking part in the relative opening of the economy from 2004, and to analyse the sectorial and the geographical distribution of its enterprises in the urban network and in the regions of Ukraine.

Organizational Innovation in Nineteenth-Century Railway Investment: Peripheral Countries in a Global Economy

The relationship between ownership and control of distant ventures has been a major topic in business history. This relationship prompted the creation of a specific organizational form, the freestanding company, particularly active in international business before World War I. The freestanding form and railway companies such as Companhia Real share the common characteristic of being stand-alone firms based on foreign direct investment (FDI), but their legal ownership and management strategy were different. The freestanding companies offshored legal ownership; Companhia Real offshored top management since it was incorporated in the country hosting FDI. This business configuration was usual in French investments across European peripheral countries. This article introduces a new concept into the current international business literature, emphasizing the polymorphous character of foreign investment before World War I.

La diversification des portefeuilles français à la veille de 1914 ou l'image écornée du rentier français du 19e siècle

Dès la fin du 19e siècle, les capitaux européens financent le développement des infrastructures dans le monde. L’ampleur de ces flux de capitaux, essentiellement britanniques et français, a suscité de nombreuses interrogations quant aux motivations sous-jacentes. Goetzmann et Ukhov [2006] ont montré que les investisseurs victoriens étaient au fait d’une méthode d’investissement appelée « geographical distribution of capital », proche du principe de diversification internationale des portefeuilles. Parent et Rault [2004] ont montré que les investissements français à l’étranger obéissaient également à des considérations économiques et financières. Nous nous demandons dans cet article si, comme les investisseurs victoriens, les investisseurs français raisonnaient en termes de distribution géographique de leurs avoirs et faisaient montre d’une aussi grande modernité dans leurs choix d’investissements. Pour cela, dans une première partie, nous explorons la littérature de la fin du 19e siècle qui montre combien les analystes financiers français encourageaient les investisseurs à détenir un portefeuille « diversifié ». Dans une deuxième partie, nous appliquons à une base de données harmonisée la théorie moderne du portefeuille et construisons un portefeuille international optimal. Nous démontrons une adéquation entre la répartition effective des avoirs français et leur distribution optimale et délivrons une représentation de l’investisseur français contrastant avec l’image d’Épinal du rentier français averse au risque.

The Belle Epoque of International Finance: French Capital Exports, 1880‐1914

This paper introduces a new dataset of French investments in foreign securities. This is the most detailed data available to date. The data is used to study the composition, valuation, and total return of the French portfolio of non‐sovereign foreign securities on the 34 years before World War I. Additional insights are obtained about the structure of the financial market in France.

French Direct Investments in the Ottoman Empire Before World War I

Foreign direct investment entered into the Ottoman Empire to support and develop foreign trade. Europeans who wanted to sell their manufactured products and acquire raw materials were instrumental in the construction of trade-related infrastructure in this country. Therefore, the first French investments, like those of other countries, were made for constructing railways and ports. The growth of raw material production in primary commodities, finally led to an increase in the number of foreign service companies such as banks and insurance providers that served these transport and production facilities. The initial motivations of French investors were mainly economic as they tried to find new markets and secure a viable share in these markets before their international competitors. Motives gradually became political as the opinion about the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire got stronger by the end of the nineteenth century. The French government assisted its investors in obtaining important concessions for investments in Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Arab provinces of the Empire.

French Direct Investments in the Ottoman Empire Before World War I

Foreign direct investment entered into the Ottoman Empire to support and develop foreign trade. Europeans who wanted to sell their manufactured products and acquire raw materials were instrumental in the construction of trade-related infrastructure in this country. Therefore, the first French investments, like those of other countries, were made for constructing railways and ports. The growth of raw material production in primary commodities, finally led to an increase in the number of foreign service companies such as banks and insurance providers that served these transport and production facilities. The initial motivations of French investors were mainly economic as they tried to find new markets and secure a viable share in these markets before their international competitors. Motives gradually became political as the opinion about the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire got stronger by the end of the nineteenth century. The French government assisted its investors in obtaining important concessions for investments in Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Arab provinces of the Empire.

L'épargne française exposée aux risques russes dans les années 1900-1920 : la réalité d'actifs tangibles et mobiles

Many pamphleteers in the 1900s-1920s and of short-sighted histories criticised French investments in Russia. They accused on the moment or retrospectively bankers and financiers of having involved savers’ cash (that of “France des petits” and middle classes) in the “adventure” of “emprunts russes”. Our paper intends to argue about the reality of the portfolio of risk analysis of which banks equipped themselves in order to set up a capital of skills and to draw a “curb of experience”, to apply them to risks management fostered by assets committed to eastern Europe.

French banks, governance, and specific investments

This paper analyses the impact of French banks on the adoption of specific investment in French companies through board representation and ownership stakes. The theoretical principles suggest that the banks refuse the financing of this type of investment. Therefore, the level of banking debt has a negative effect on the specific investment. Our hypotheses suggest that this effect changes according to the contribution of bankers in the corporate governance system. The results carried out on a sample including 176 French listed firms show a change in the behaviour of banks following a real implication in the corporate governance system.

L'implantation industrielle française en Allemagne fédérale, de 1945 au début des années 1960 une ambition renouvelée ?

French industrial implantation in West Germany, from 1945 to the early 1960s: a renewed ambition?, Jean-François Eck. The growth of French investments in West Germany from 1945 to I960 was spectacular. This strong increase was often due to the return of enterprises whose business had been ruined by Nazism. The really new establishments were rare and limited. But the development of investments had an influence on the management of business that, thanks to internationalization, modernized their ways of running their business. Business leaders payed more attention to manufacturing costs and less to national demand to which delocalization was supposed to answer. A capital change.

Foreign Capital, Local Interests and Railway Development in Argentina: French Investments in Railways, 1900–1914

Between 1900 and 1914, Argentina experienced the period of greatest growth of its railway network (see Fig. 1). During this time its total length was increased by about 12,000 miles, thus improving on the increase achieved during the railway boom of the 1880s. As before, the new peak was associated with a massive inflow of foreign capital which reached record levels: about 2,000 million gold pesos, against 800 millions during the 1880s. Furthermore, the new railway constructions were mainly made after 1907 and located in the pampas (see Tables 1 and 2). This rapid growth has been explained by many authors mainly as a global consequence of the so-called Mitre law (national law 5315), sanctioned in 1907, which standardised railway legislation in a way that favoured foreign investors, giving rise to an investment boom, especially among the British groups settled in the pampas.1

L'investissement français à l'étranger : constat et conséquences macroéconomiques

Two main conclusions can be derived from the present study : 1) although improving, French investments abroad remain relatively limited compared with our main partners ; 2) these investments, which often supplement exporting efforts on a microeconomic level (aiming at cost differentials or an increase market penetration), do have in the aggregate (or on an individual basis when induced exports are sufficiently significant) a positive impact on the balance of payments and on employment. It seems therefore that the control on direct investments should be limited to large-scale transactions.

Tsarist Debts and Tsarist Foreign Policy

The sheer size of the Russian foreign debt in 1917 has profoundly affected our view of the influence of foreign capital on tsarist diplomacy. It has been argued by both Western and Soviet historians that Russian foreign relations were in good part influenced by, or even determined by, Russia’s debtor status to France and—to a lesser degree—to Great Britain. Thus a Western historian argued recently that in the last years of tsarist rule “foreign credit became a tool of power politics and a limitation on Russian sovereignty in general. … Between 1887 and 1917 Russian policy was tied to French policy, inasmuch as French investments were controlled, to a large extent, by the French Government.” Recently published Soviet works, while revising Stalin’s judgment that Russia was economically a semicolony of Western capital, continue to assert that the “financial-economic dependence on the capital, continue to assert that the “financial-economic dependence on the Entente countries pushed tsarist Russia into a military alliance with them.”

France and Fragmentation in West Africa: 1945–1960

The term ‘balkanization’, as applied to colonial policy in Africa, frequently suggests a European ‘divide and rule’ policy, intended to fragment pre-existing African unity. An examination of the policy of France towards the former federation of French West Africa indicates that the term is inaccurate to describe French policy.The federation was created by the French for the French. It served to streamline French administration during the period of expansion, to help develop the component territories' economies, and to guarantee the security of French private investments. France conceived of the territories as the basic political units and hence modern political life was implanted there rather than in the federation. Post World War II French public investments flowed chiefly to the territories, common federal services were decentralized as territories acquired expertise and funds to run their own, and the quasi-federal Senate called the Grand Conseil was allowed to expire. Other aspects of French policy had unintended centrifugal effects, such as the metropolitan party structure and consequent dispersal of African representatives in Paris, and the influence of some French parties in Africa. Since 1956, France logically responded to African leaders' demands for more power and eventual autonomy in the territories, and left it to the Africans to decide whether or not to continue their federal relationship.By 1956, the federation had outlived its usefulness to France. It is improbable that the metropole could have ‘saved’ it, because political territorial roots were too strong, the Africans were not agreed, and relations between France and Africa had already become mainly bilateral with the territories directly. Consequently it appears that the federation, a purely French creation, was simply permitted to fade away once its functions were no longer relevant to French needs. It is true that France preferred eight small, powerless states to a strong federation when national independence approached, but ‘powerless’ and ‘strong’ in this context are but relative terms. The story of the federation of French West Africa suggests that such political structures can survive the colonial period only if they are anchored in fundamental African needs; this was not the case with that federation.