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Good practice Imported

Choose Paris Region — one-stop investment and talent attraction agency

France · Paris · See the France profile · See the Paris profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 54% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Choose Paris Region is the Île-de-France Region's official attractiveness agency. In 2022 it directly facilitated 308 FDI projects creating 7,749 jobs (≈75% of Paris Region total). In 2024: 370 projects, 8,170 jobs (+18%). Clients include OpenAI, HubSpot and Datadog.

308
FDI projects supported (2022)
7,749
Jobs created (2022)
370
FDI projects supported (2024)
8,170
Jobs created (2024)
Choose Paris Region — one-stop investment and talent attraction agency

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Choose Paris Region
Period
2014–present
Region (NUTS)
FR10
Keywords
Investment promotion, talent attraction

Context

Choose Paris Region (CPR) is a governmental attractiveness agency co-owned by the Ile-de-France Region, the Grand Paris Metropolitan Area, the CCI Paris Ile-de-France, the French government, Bpifrance and Business France. Created in 2014, its mandate is to promote Paris Region internationally, attract foreign direct investment, and help international companies and talent relocate and settle.

Activities

CPR operates as a one-stop shop across the investment lifecycle -- market intelligence, site selection, regulatory guidance on permits and visas, introductions to investors, and post-establishment aftercare -- while its Work&Live Paris Region talent service advises on the French Tech Visa fast-track residence permit and connects arrivals to recruitment networks. Following a July 2023 merger with the Paris Region Tourism Committee, CPR consolidated investment, talent, film and tourism functions under one roof.

Results

In 2022 CPR directly supported 308 international investment projects -- approximately 75% of all FDI projects realised in Paris Region that year -- creating 7,749 direct jobs. In 2024, the agency facilitated 370 new projects creating 8,170 jobs, an 18% increase in projects over 2023. Paris Region ranked #1 worldwide for FDI in cleantech, renewable energies and electric vehicles (fDi Intelligence, 2024), and notable clients include OpenAI's European HQ, HubSpot, Datadog, Twilio and Synthesia.

Conclusions

A decade of continuous, jointly governed operation and independently published regional facts-and-figures data give CPR's project and jobs counts more external corroboration than most agency self-reporting, though the figures remain administrative tallies rather than a counterfactual-based evaluation of the agency's own causal effect.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — Funded jointly by six co-owning institutions (regional and national government, chamber of commerce, public investment bank and trade agency); specific annual budget not itemised in the available sources.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Operating continuously since 2014 (11 years to 2025); consolidated investment, talent, film and tourism functions after a July 2023 merger with the Paris Region Tourism Committee.
Staffing & skills
Choose Paris Region agency staff (investment, talent, aftercare teams), Six institutional co-owners: Ile-de-France Region, Grand Paris Metropolitan Area, CCI Paris Ile-de-France, French State, Bpifrance, Business France

Conditions for success

  • A formal multi-institution governance convention (regional government, metropolitan authority, chamber of commerce, national state, public investment bank, trade-promotion agency) to pool mandate and funding
  • A genuine one-stop-shop service spanning site selection, permits/visas and aftercare so investors and talent do not need to navigate multiple agencies
  • A dedicated fast-track visa product (French Tech Visa) integrated into the talent-attraction service

Common failure modes

  • Services are oriented to companies and high-skilled mobile talent, with no documented support specifically for under-represented or disadvantaged groups
  • Reported project/job figures are the agency's own attribution of 'directly supported' investments, which may overstate its marginal causal contribution versus investments that would have occurred anyway

Where it fits

Governance type
multi-institutional public agency
Scale
regional (Ile-de-France, ~12 million people)
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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