Metz would be the ideal refuge for “full remote” Parisian employees

Metz is a paradise for salaried teleworkers in Paris. This is the lesson of a list proposed on the front page by the newspaper The Parisian /Today in France in its Sunday edition of December 1. The Lorraine city comes at the top of a top 20 drawn up by the French daily. It receives an overall score of 12.15 out of 20 based, our colleagues explain, “on the comparison of around forty criteria between cities with more than 15,000 inhabitants outside Île-de-France accessible by train from Paris”.

In this little game, Metz is ahead of Compiègne (in Oise, north of Paris) and Orléans (in Loiret, south of Paris), both credited with a score of 12.09. No other city close to Luxembourg is included in the leading group revealed by the media.

The TGV, Metz’s main asset

In total, 306 cities were scanned by journalists from Parisian on the basis of criteria “measuring the quality of life in the municipality, its demographic dynamism, its environment, the ways for residents to get around there (with a penalty for the car), the real estate purchasing power thanks in particular to data from MeilleursAgents (real estate advertisement site, editor’s note), its weather forecast, its security figures, and obviously the shortest train journey time to connect the capital (without taking into account the frequency of trains or their regularity)” .

On this last point, Metz stands out thanks to the high-speed rail connection with the Gare de l’Est in Paris. Please note that the quickest journey by train to reach the two cities is 1 hour 20 minutes (1 hour 45 minutes on average). Statistics reinforced by a wide hourly amplitude and a high frequency. Ideal for potential workers for a return trip during the day.

“Metz-Paris can be the same travel time as crossing Île-de-France from east to west, for example,” observes François Grosdidier, the mayor of the Moselle commune, in the article.

“A city on a human scale in which we have everything”

Border areas, including that of Luxembourg, are presented as assets for Metz. Likewise, real estate pressure is significantly less strong there than in Paris: less than 2,300 euros per square meter, according to the newspaper’s statements from MeilleursAgents. Even if, notes a witness cited by the Metz correspondent of the Parisian newspaper, the surge in prices around the prefecture is a reality.

Contacted by the Ile-de-France newspaper to comment on this list, François Grosdidier did not fail to highlight the honorary distinction on his personal social networks, inviting his fellow citizens to be proud. “Metz may have 120,000 inhabitants, but it is a city on a human scale in which we have everything,” he underlines in the columns of the daily.

To support his point, The Parisian gives the floor to some Metz residents. Like Benjamin, who signed a permanent contract in 2022 for a Parisian start-up which allows him to work “full remote”, 100% remotely. “Before, I worked in Luxembourg, with a hellish pace of life: four hours of travel per day, and teleworking limited to around thirty days per year. […] The city of Metz is well placed for European travel (the proximity of Findel is also mentioned, Editor’s note). And in the TGV in the morning, we see the commuters, who go back and forth to Paris. I understand them, because we have a very good quality of life here.”