Boost ahead for small businesses

Two changes in the law, which has still to be passed, would see micro-entrepreneurs who earn less than €5,000 no longer required to hold a separate bank account for earnings and would sweep away the need for artisans to pay for and attend a 30-hour ‘preparatory’ course in business life.

However, Grégoire Leclercq, leader of the Fédération des Auto-entrepreneurs, called the changes an over-reaction.

He told L’Express newspaper the problem was not in holding a second bank account but in banks demanding that that account be a business account, with extra charges.

While the federation had long said the preparatory ‘stage’ was too long and costly; it still gave some useful information for start-ups and it would have been better if wasteful detail had been cut and a shorter, more useful course retained.