The French state hands out €130Bn worth of contracts every year. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) capture 30% of French public markets and at the regional level, 57% of the public contracts goes to SMEs. While these look like admirable successes for SMEs, the French government is keen to give SMEs a further boost.
Access to these huge public markets and tenders have been made easier for SMEs in France since the end of 2006. The new measures stop short of active positive discrimination, such as practiced in the USA where the “Buy American Act” and the “Small Business Act” establish quotas for domestic and SMEs. In the US, 23% of the direct suppliers of public tenders (equivalent to $700Bn) and 40% of sub-contractors are reserved for companies with fewer than 500 employees. Set quotas and positive discrimination of this type are not allowed in the EU but the French are lobbying hard to change this.
Nearly half of the public contracts are for the building and construction sector. The rest can be divided into three roughly equal slices divided between defence/electronics, general supplies and IT/telecommunications. For the French state, the definition of an SME is one that employs less than 250 people and where turnover for the previous three years has not exceeded €40m.
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The French state hands out €130Bn worth of contracts every year. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) capture 30% of French public markets and at the regional level, 57% of the public contracts goes to SMEs. While these look like admirable successes for SMEs, the French government is keen to give SMEs a further boost.