Nice/ New Delhi, June 14 (UNI) French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday hailed India as a global innovation powerhouse and a leader in frontier technologies, saying the country is no longer viewed merely as a source of talent and outsourcing services but as a nation shaping the future of technological innovation.
Speaking at the inauguration of the Bharat Innovates 2026 event in Nice, Macron highlighted India's demographic strength, engineering talent and technological achievements, while positioning France as Europe's leading innovation hub and a natural partner for India's growth ambitions. "You have the demographic dividend," Macron said, referring to India's population of 1.4 billion and its vast pool of skilled professionals.
"A country that trains as many engineers as Europe and the United States combined — more than one million every year — is spearheading global innovation," he said, adding that India's advances in research and frontier technologies were helping drive innovation worldwide. Pointing to India's achievements in the space sector, Macron cited the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission as a testament to the country's technological capabilities.
"The Chandrayaan-3 mission and the first-ever landing near the Moon's south pole demonstrated India's strength in innovation, its capacity for implementation and its industrial capabilities," he said. Emphasising the changing global perception of India, Macron said the country had emerged as a major technological force. "India is not only a country promising talent and delivering it. It is not only a country full of contractors. Absolutely not. It is a country of innovation and a country of technologies," he said.
Macron was addressing the Bharat Innovates event, which he jointly inaugurated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of efforts to deepen cooperation between India and France in innovation, research and emerging technologies.
"We respect the Make in India initiative. France has been part of it in diverse sectors," Macron said. "India is a country of innovation. India and France have a true partnership in critical sectors such as artificial intelligence and climate change," he added.
The French President also identified civil nuclear energy as an area with significant potential for future collaboration. "There is scope to expand bilateral cooperation in the civil nuclear energy sector, including in the area of Small Modular Reactors," he said.
Bharat Innovates 2026 is a flagship initiative aimed at showcasing India's deep-tech startups, research ventures and innovation ecosystem on the global stage while fostering partnerships with international investors and technology leaders. Using the occasion to promote France's innovation credentials, Macron described his country as Europe's most attractive destination for investment for seven consecutive years.
"We have shown this recently with Choose France, with 93 billion euros of investment confirmed. For seven years, France has been the most attractive country in Europe," he said. Highlighting France's strengths in artificial intelligence, aerospace, quantum technologies and clean energy, Macron stressed that the global race for AI leadership would be determined by access to computing power, talent and reliable energy supplies. "The AI race is a race for computing capacity, talent and energy," he said.
Macron noted that France's largely decarbonised energy mix provides a major advantage in supporting the expansion of data centres and advanced AI infrastructure. "France is the only country in Europe with a large language model ecosystem capable of competing with China and the United States through Mistral AI," he said.
Calling for deeper collaboration between the two countries, Macron said Bharat Innovates would serve as an important bridge between India's innovation ecosystem and France's technology and investment landscape. "This meeting is particularly meaningful today. It brings together India's innovation capacities through Bharat Innovates and France's innovation ecosystem through Choose France and France 2030," he said.
Macron also announced that he would join Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the VivaTech technology conference in the coming days, underscoring the growing strategic importance of India-France cooperation in technology, innovation and investment. His remarks reflected the expanding partnership between New Delhi and Paris, which has increasingly focused on emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, clean energy, space cooperation and industrial innovation as both countries seek to strengthen technological sovereignty and drive sustainable economic growth.UNI AAB SKA