By Sami Zaptia.
London, 8 June 2021:
The French Employers Association (Mouvement des entreprises de France / Movement of the Enterprises of France – MEDEF) wants to obtain large contracts in the Libyan reconstruction market, despite the decline in the fortunes of French companies to Turkish and Italian companies in Libya.
MEDEF is the largest employer federation in France originally established under another name (CNPF) in 1946. It has more than 750,000 members, 90 percent of which are SMEs with fewer than 50 employees.
According to the Africa Report, quoted by Libyan media outlet Fawasel, MEDEF does not want to miss its opportunity to participate in the reconstruction of Libya and wants to join other foreign companies to improve the business climate in Libya, which improved after the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) last February.
The report stated that Prime Minister Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba visited MEDEF headquarters, which included a group of French companies accompanied by a number of government ministers during their visit to Paris on 1 June, during which he met French President Emmanuel Macron.
Aldabaiba met with officials of the French employers’ association MEDEF, in the presence of about 15 representatives of the main French companies, including Vinci, Total, Demos and Sanofi, and the discussions focused mostly on rebuilding the security, health, airports and port logistics sectors in Libya.
Despite some recent attempts to organize forums in Libya, the last meeting of the MEDEF group in the country was in 2012, but the election of Aldabaiba as prime minister and Mohamed Menfi as head of the Presidential Council revived hopes that the Libyan crisis would soon end, according to the report.
