Mere days earlier than the second spherical of the fateful presidential election in France, the incumbent President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, sat down with native media to share his ideas on the digital economic system — a topic he didn’t converse on a lot earlier than. Whereas emphasizing the significance of the sector, Macron as soon as once more reiterated his help for the pan-European strategy to monetary know-how regulation.

The interview with French publication The Huge Walecame on April 22, two days earlier than the runoff that can see Macron face the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen. In response to most polls, Macron is extra prone to win, but the margin is anticipated to be very skinny. Within the 2017, he outpaced Le Pen with 66.1% of the vote within the second spherical.

Responding to a sequence of questions on digital economic system, Net 3.0 and crypto, the incumbent President stood agency by his trademark cautiousness towards innovation:

“It represents […] a chance to not be missed […] for France and Europe to guide the longer term generations of the net. However it is usually a social and societal problem.”

Macron appeared happy to notice how variety of French unicorn corporations ⁠— that’s, personal startups valued at $1 billion or extra ⁠— rose from 3 to 26 throughout his presidential time period, whereas total investments in French startups elevated fivefold. He additionally talked about setting the bar at 100 French corporations with a unicorn standing and 10 being European giants by 2030.

One technique to obtain that, Macron stated, could be increasing code studying in public faculties to coach 400,000 to 500,000 extra builders over the subsequent 5 years.

The president additionally elaborated on his earlier point out of the “European metaverse,” saying that it is vital that European gamers don’t depend upon American or Chinese language technological giants in “mastering the technological constructing blocks related to Web3.” Europe, he maintained, has an edge within the NFT sector as a result of its imense cultural heritage. Macron stated:

“We can’t take into account our cultural coverage with out this revolution. I need our important cultural establishments to develop an NFT coverage, by selling, disseminating and defending the digital twins or variations of their bodily collections.”

Commenting on the latest European Parliament rules of crypto, Macron supported the present strategy (and theMiCAframework particularly), noting that the brand new guidelines shouldn’t hinder innovation:

“I do not consider in a self-regulated monetary sector. This may be neither sustainable nor democratic. It’s as much as the general public authorities to outline the proper circumstances to permit the sector to develop in confidence whereas encouraging innovation.”

The 44-year-old politician additionally vocally supported the digital euro venture, which has been getting pushback from the publicrecently.