PARIS (Reuters) - France has launched moves aimed at helping expatriates to return back home, for example by streamlining red tape and allowing returnees to register their new workplace as a temporary address while flat-hunting.
The number of French abroad has swollen to an estimated 2.5 million. With French unemployment rooted around 10 percent, the United States and Switzerland are big draws while cities such as London are also often seen offering greater job opportunities.
British Prime Minister David Cameron notably irked Paris in 2012 by offering to "lay out the red carpet" for entrepreneurs seeking to escape French tax rises.
French officials said the aim of the exercise was not to lower the number of expats but simply to make sure they could reintegrate into French life and the local economy after gaining valuable international experience.
"It is more difficult to return than to leave," Senator Helene Conway-Mouret said, presenting a government-commissioned report that proposed 50 measures to reduce the administrative burden on those thinking about coming back home.
Conway-Mouret said her findings, based on interviews with over 7,000 people still living abroad or just returned, showed expats were often unaware of the processes they needed to go through in a largely paper-based administrative system.
She proposed an online service to handle expat queries and more efforts to ensure they knew their rights on returning, such as the possibility of including their days spent working abroad in their retirement plan.
Welcoming the report, Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for all its proposals to be put into action.
(Reporting by Tommaso Mazzanti; editing by Mark John)
