Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning to all of you. It's a real pleasure for me and for all the Michelin teams to welcome you here once again for this annual general meeting. It's always an important moment for us, and I would like to thank you for being with us today. This meeting is also broadcast live on our website, and I'd like to wish a warm welcome to all those of you who are following us online.
The annual general meeting is an important time for decision-making, but also for information sharing and discussion about what brings us together, i.e., your group, Michelin. Without further ado, I declare open our 2023 combined general meeting. Present with me are Yves Chapot, General Manager and Chief Financial Officer of the group, Benoît Balmary, General Counsel of the group.
Jean-Christophe Georghiou, Frédéric Gouët, representing respectively the statutory auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte. Are also present, the first row, the members of the Supervisory Board of your company, Mr. Vincent Montagne, representing in his capacity as Chairman SAGES, a non-managing general partner. We're now going to proceed to the Constitution of the Bureau.
I am now appointing as the scrutineers those who are representing the largest number of shares who have accepted this function. I'm talking about Mr. Pierre Michelin, Chairman of Mage-Invest, and Mr. Marc Donnet, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Michelin Manufacturers Employee Savings Fund, BIB Primote. The Bureau thus, the constituted, appointed Benoît Balmary, here present, as Secretary of the Assembly. The attendance sheet shows that the quorum requirements have been met, the final count will be given to you before the vote on the resolutions.
The Assembly may therefore validly deliberate on the issues on the agenda set out in the notice of meeting sent to you. This general assembly of an ordinary and extraordinary nature meets on its first convening. I would now like to give you a summary of your Group's activity in 2022 and then outlook for 2023. For this, I give the floor to Yves Chapot.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. More than ever, Michelin's business model is based on a balance between our various stakeholders. The development of people and respect for the climate of the planet are inseparable from the Group's economic and financial performance. The Group continues to deploy its Michelin in Motion strategy, presented at the April 2021 Investor Day, and then updated in March of 2022.
Over the past 2 years, while navigating a highly disruptive environment, the Group has achieved good results in each of our pillars: people, planet, and economic performance. This is illustrated as follows. Michelin cares about its impact on people, not only our employees, but also our customers, suppliers, and the communities living around our sites. We want to be a global benchmark in terms of employee engagement.
The engagement rate expresses the confidence of employees in the Michelin Group. It has increased by 3 points to reach 83% in 2022. The engagement rate is increasing in all employee categories, and all regions have improved. Our target for 2030 is 85%. Michelin also wants to be a global benchmark in the field of safety in the workplace, which is, of course, valid for any company, but especially fundamental in an industrial company.
2022 marks the return to a dynamic of progress in line with our objectives. All the prevention actions in the industrial sector have borne fruit, and we're confident of achieving the Group's ambitions for 2030, with a Total Case Incident Rate of less than 0.5. Michelin also wants to be a benchmark in terms of diversity and inclusion within its teams.
The Group is very much involved in this area, with the majority of the components of the indicator that we are following, which is called the IMDI on Diversity and Inclusion, have improved in 2022. For example, the share of women continue to increase in management to almost 30%, with the intention of reaching 35% by 2030. Finally, we want to be the best in the industry in terms of value created for our customers.
Professionalism, product and service advantage, the quality remain the Group's main strengths. Our customers are increasingly positive about two identified areas for improvement, responsiveness and efficiency. Let's now move on to the second dimension, i.e., our planet. From an environmental point of view, the Group continued its efforts to reduce the impact of its activities in 2022, despite the disrupted environment. In this respect, I would like to come back to four indicators that we are monitoring at Group level to assess the results of the measures we are implementing and the intensity of the efforts we are making to make all of our activities increasingly sustainable. Our first ambition is to achieve zero net CO2 emissions from industry and energy by 2050. The reduction of CO2 emissions mounted to 17% in 2022, reflecting the robustness of the improvement actions implemented.
For example, the supply of guaranteed renewable electricity to our factories. This share has risen from 42% to 52%, thanks to the purchase of certified green electricity in China and Thailand. But also the implementation of good practices regarding the way tires are cured and the management of air in buildings. Looking ahead to 2030, we're confident that the technical levers identified in our roadmap will enable us to achieve our target. Michelin wants to contribute to achieving zero net CO2 emissions in terms of use. In passenger cars and light trucks, progress is being made with the e.Primacy 4+, and Pilot Sport EV products. In heavy goods vehicles, the success of the X InCity EV Z electric bus range demonstrates the Group's determination to support the decarbonization of urban mobility.
The ongoing deployment of the eco-design approach is a robust lever in the progress dynamic. Michelin is accelerating the deployment of its Watèa by Michelin offer designed to support the electrification of light commercial vehicle fleets, and has announced its plan to open Watèa's capital to the Crédit Agricole leasing subsidiary. We will shed some light on this fascinating subject in a moment. We also want to be a global benchmark for the environmental footprint of industrial sites. In addition to the material we take from the environment, we also track an indicator that measures the environmental impact of our production site. Our target for 2030 is to reduce this impact by one-third. Michelin wants to achieve the full circularity of its products by 2050. As you know, natural resources exist on Earth only in limited quantities.
It is therefore our responsibility to constantly innovate, to increase the proportion of recycled and renewable bio-based materials in the products that we market without ever compromising their quality, of course. The result for 2022 is close to 30%, up 1% versus 2021. This is in line with our roadmap to reach the target of 40% sustainable materials by 2030. In 2022, the Group improved the maturity of specific technologies in its R&D projects, increased the use of certain sustainable materials in the current tires, and also improved the traceability of its supply chains with certain suppliers. Our ambition will be explained later. Now, let's move on to the last dimension, i.e., the economic performance of the Group. In an environment marked by a series of crises, Michelin delivered robust results in 2022.
With our long-term ambitions in mind, we've maintained all our investments in industry and R&D. I would like to mention four indicators to illustrate the activity in 2022. Sales, up to 20.2% to EUR 28.6 billion in 2022. Despite a 2% drop in tire sales volume, our rigorous pricing policy and the mix effect reflecting in particular the priority given to the Michelin brand. All of this has had a positive impact on sales. Non-tire business is expected to grow by around 5% a year between now and 2030, and should account for 20%-30% of our revenue by 2030. The second indicator now, operating profit from the sectors, was EUR 3.4 billion, in line with our commitment, i.e., 11.9% of sales.
Our very proactive price management has enabled the Group to maintain its margin in the face of historically high inflation factors, rising raw material and energy prices, and in particular in the first half of the year, transport costs. Third indicator, free cash flow, was negative this year at EUR 180 million, reflecting the one-off impact of inflation on working capital requirements. Finally, the return on capital employed, which measures value creation. It was 10.8%, up 0.5 points versus last year, reflecting the Group's progress in both profitability and optimization of capital employed. Finally, I'd like to underscore that your Group benefits from a solid financial structure with a net debt ratio limited to 25%. Now, let's have a look at the sharing of Michelin's added value.
The Group has long been committed to sharing the added value generated by its activities fairly. You can see in this diagram that the added value created by the Group, once we've paid our suppliers, EUR 16 billion, this will amount to EUR 12.7 billion in 2022. This added value that was distributed as follows. You can see that this increase between 2021 and 2022 was generated fairly. If we look at 2022, EUR 12.7 billion distributed as follows: 55% to our employees, 17% to finance our investments ensuring the sustainability and development of our activities, 9% and 3% respectively to the states in which we operate through taxes and to the banks that help finance our growth.
8% will be paid to our shareholders through the dividend proposed in the framework of this meeting. Finally, 8% to various items, including exceptional items in 2022, especially the costs incurred in Russia to maintain the remuneration of our teams pending a sales agreement. Let us now zoom in on our tax policy and the group's commitment to guaranteeing transparency in tax matters to the administrations of the countries in which we operate. It is important to understand that our fiscal responsibility is consistent with the group's core values. By way of illustration, the group's geographical locations are driven by industrial and commercial operational needs and not by tax considerations. In addition to publishing our tax strategy and golden rules internally, we've detailed the main elements of our tax policy in the universal registration document 2022.
We support the European initiative to make country-by-country reporting public by 2026. We are working to anticipate this publication. To this end, we plan to produce in 2024 a tax transparency report based on our 2023 financial statements. Let's have a look at our activity as at the end of the first quarter of 2023. In an environment of declining market, sales for the first quarter of 2023 were up 7.4%, reaching EUR 7 billion. They testify to the relevance of our business model and our pricing discipline, despite a slowdown in the European and North American passenger car and trucker markets in a context of economic uncertainty and inventory reduction. We've been able to generate a growth of our sales. Our non-tire business continues to grow strongly, approximately 15%.
During the year, we believe that will be a slight decrease versus last year. In this scenario, the group confirms its annual forecast for 2023 with an annual operating profit from the sectors in excess of EUR 3.2 billion on a like-for-like basis, and a free cash flow before acquisitions in excess of EUR 1.6 billion. As you can see through our capital allocation policy, we aim to strike the right balance between reinvesting part of the cash generated by the group to finance its growth, maintaining a reasonable level of debt and remunerating our various stakeholders. We are therefore proposing for 2022 a dividend of EUR 1.25 per share, up 11%, which represents a payout ratio of 44% in line with our ambition to gradually raise it to 50%.
It should be noted that over 10 years, the total return to shareholders, taking into account the evolution of the Michelin share price and the reinvested dividend, is close to 100%. I would remind you that the group automatically creates dilution in its shares with new shares created as a result of the employee share ownership plans and the free share allocation programs. In order to neutralize this dilution, the group buys back shares on the market, and the shares that purchase in this way are canceled, i.e., they're simply removed from the stock market. Michelin does not aim to support or increase its share price when implementing these share buyback programs, but simply to safeguard the unit value of the share for its shareholders.
Finally, I would like to take a moment to look at another mechanism that illustrates the sharing of added value. Employee ownership. Employee ownership or shareholding is a strong indicator of employee confidence in the group's future and the strategy. Today, more than one employee in 2 is a Michelin shareholder worldwide, which represents 2.2% of the group's capital.
Our goal is to reach 4% by 2030, which means doubling the share of employee shareholders in our capital and encouraging the subscription of our agents. 2022 marked an important turning point for employee share ownership. We worked on several levers of attractiveness and accessibility, the first of which was the division of the nominal value of the share by 4. This is something that you approved during our annual general meeting in 2022.
This operation made it possible to rethink the subscription offer while maintaining the possibility for each shareholder to express his or her opinion on the management of the group. The shareholding plans are now annual, and we are proposing to extend our performance, share, plans to more employees. Dear shareholders, I would like to thank you for your attention and your trust.
Thank you very much, Yves, for this very clear and very comprehensive presentation. Now I'd like to give the floor to Mr. Jean-Christophe Georghiou, who represents the statutory auditors.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning. It's a great honor on behalf of the joint statutory auditors represented by Deloitte & Touche and PricewaterhouseCoopers to present the reports that we prepared for you. We've issued several reports in the performance of our assignment for the financial year 2022. Firstly, our reports on the annual accounts and the consolidated accounts, as well as our report on the regulated agreements and commitments of your company. We've also issued a report on the 15th resolution submitted to you on the reduction of the share capital of your company. Finally, PricewaterhouseCoopers audit has prepared a report on the consolidated non-financial performance statement.
These reports are contained in the universal registration document, which have been made available on the company's website and on pages that will be shown on the screen in the following slides. I propose to summarize our reports. Our reports on the consolidated and annual accounts were issued on the 17th of February, 2023. These reports conclude that we have certified the accounts without reservation with regard to, first of all, the IFRS standard as adopted in the European Union for consolidated accounts and French accounting rules and principles for annual accounts. We've based our opinion on the work carried out or coordinated by the College of Statutory Auditors, which enables us to obtain reasonable assurance that the accounts and the financial information are fair and regular. Our work is adapted to the specificities and characteristics of your group.
It covers both routine operations, also special events in the year. We rely on internal control procedures and systems, we deploy audit teams under our responsibility to the group's subsidiaries around the world and in France. The conclusions of this work are presented to the management and Audit Committee of your group. We state in our reports that we have no observations to make with regard to the specific verifications, in particular with regard to, first of all, the fairness of the information given in the chairman's report on the management of the Group, also on the accuracy and the fairness of the information provided on the remuneration paid to the corporate offices.
Our reports also include a description of the key audit issues, i.e., those issues that relate to the risks of a material misstatement that we consider to be the most important for the audit of the 2022 accounts. These were the main topics of discussion with the management and the Audit Committee. For each of these key audit issues in our reports, we describe the reasons why we've selected them, also the nature of the risk identified and the audit response that we've made. For the end of the fiscal year 2022 ended 31st of December, these key issues relate to the valuation of goodwill of the most sensitive units and also the valuation of employment benefits under defined benefit plans for annual accounts on the valuation of equity securities.
Let's move on to the special report which concerns the regulated agreements. We state in this report that we've been advised of no agreements which were authorized during the past financial year or in previous financial years and which would have continued during financial year 2022. For extraordinary resolutions, we issue reports when this is required by law. This year we have therefore issued a report on the 15th resolution, which proposes that you delegate to the managing partners for a period of 24 months, the power to reduce the capital by canceling shares of the company purchased up to a limit of 10% of the capital. Our report does not concern any specific references or observations on this.
Finally, to conclude, PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, as an independent, third party, has issued a report on the consolidated declaration of non-financial performance, which is included in the management report and which contains social, environmental, and societal information. This report concluded that there were no significant anomalies. There you are, ladies and gentlemen, I've now finished with our reports, and I thank you on behalf of the College of Auditors for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jean-Christophe Georghiou, for your intervention. Now without further ado, I'm going to hand over to the Chairwoman, Mrs. Barbara Dalibard, who's the Chairwoman of our Supervisory Board, who's now going to present the reports on the board's activities and also on the draft resolutions which are submitted to you today.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. This is the second time that I've reported to you as chairman of the supervisory board of your group at this general meeting. It's a great honor, but also a great responsibility. I'll do so on behalf of all of the members of the supervisory board who are present today and who I'd like to thank for our work, which has pursued one and the same objective to defend the interests of Michelin, its stakeholders, and of course you, its shareholders. Michelin has a robust governance structure, the durability of which is a guarantee of performance and balance. As I've already had the opportunity to say last year, it's based on three complementary and well-established pillars. First of all, the managing partners who are responsible for managing Michelin, your group.
You know that we have also, Yves Chapot, who's non-managing general partner and also chief financial officer, and also the SAGES, which is non-managing general partner chaired by Vincent Montagne, who I'd like to thank for his active cooperation and also who ensures the long-term stability of your company by playing a key role in the development of the succession plan for the managing partners in close cooperation with the board and also according to a very proven process. Finally, the Supervisory Board, which is the supervisory body that ensures the proper management of the company and reports to the shareholders. Now, allow me to go into more detail about the board's mission with my colleagues, whose commitment to Michelin I would like to salute. We regularly review your group's Michelin in Motion strategy.
We do so by ensuring that it is relevant in a changing context that poses many challenges, as we saw with Yves. We've devoted a long session to this, as we do every year, we have a specific mid-year review. We review all of the activities, but also the mapping of the transformations underway. In detail, this leads us to look at the results and the financial statements of which we are kept closely informed. We also examine the organization, the operations, the risk management and internal control policies, and the corporate responsibility policy. All of these elements form a coherent whole on which the members of the board work together to take the most accurate and complete look in compliance with the mission entrusted to us by the group shareholders.
We provide advice and recommendations to the managers for any major investment for all external growth operations or asset disposals. The board is called upon to give its opinion on each of these structuring events. We systematically examine strategic merger and acquisition projects for an amount of more than EUR 50 million and for which we issue a formal opinion. Every six months, we carry out an assessment of the acquisitions made with the managers, taking into account their integration, their suitability for the strategy, and the results obtained, as well as how they're managed. Last year, we had to examine robotics, for example, in order to accelerate the development of tire-related activities by making the most of mobility data.
Also, we issued a favorable opinion for the acquisition of the remaining 51% of the capital of RLU in Indonesia, a major project, as you know, which reaffirms your group's ambitions in terms of natural rubber and therefore in sustainable materials. Our monitoring of these acquisitions over time has also led us to review the integration of Camso in Michelin and the results obtained. The role that you, the group shareholders, entrust to us also consists of providing all the elements for the proper management of the company. The appointment and the reappointment of the managing partners, as well as the termination of performance criteria which govern their variable remuneration are the subject of recommendations or agreements as the case may be by the board in close cooperation with SAGES.
This is also the case for the appointment and the succession planning of executive committee members. In this respect, the board's work aims to prepare the future of your group as well as possible with a view to anticipating future developments. In the same vein, we are particularly attentive to the diversity objectives within the management bodies of the group and to the proper implementation of the corresponding action plans. In each of its missions, the board constantly adapts to current events and the challenges faced by the group. For example, we had to organize additional meetings to examine the consequences of the conflict in Ukraine. We had lengthy discussions on the group's industrial strategy and its roadmap towards carbon neutrality or on the training approach to support the transformation of the business lines.
Of course, all of these tasks can only be carried out by a fully mobilized board. The individual participation rate of the members of the 6 board meetings and the 10 committee meetings scheduled at the beginning of the year reached 98%, which is remarkable. I would like to thank all of them for this, and it's essential for us to apply the best governance standards, more particularly, the AFEP-Code. We systematically have to check the large majority of independent members, which is essential for the confidence and relevance of our opinions. In this respect, the executive session is an important event every year, which brings together the independent members, excluding the salaried members and myself, to discuss all the subjects they consider to be relevant.
In this respect, I'd like to thank Thierry Le Hénaff, who is a member of the Supervisory Board, for leading this session in 2022. Also, we integrate our new members through dedicated training, and we also organize specific online training for all of the members of the Supervisory Board on different issues as soon as we believe this is necessary. This was the case last year on the complex subject of distribution, for example. More generally, we go out into the field as much as possible to get the most complete picture of the group's activities and in particular, the new developments around and beyond tires. Our visits in 2020 to Fenner and Camso allowed us to see firsthand their very positive contribution to the group's results.
The board has already identified a number of issues to be addressed in detail in 2023, including environmental and cybersecurity issues, which will be presented by leading external experts. In this regard, we conducted, last month, a detailed training session on current environmental, social, and governance ESG issues. We want to go further on these governance standards, as to really go into depth on certain themes. Over the last few years, the creation of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee, and also the application of different themes, remuneration and appointments, have helped to make these developments and enable us to ensure that we carry out our duties. During the governance roadshow that I led last year, we had a direct dialogue with investors, where we presented the characteristics of Michelin's governance.
These discussions gave us a lot, and I'd really like to thank warmly all those people who took part in those discussions. The board acts in the best interests of the group and its shareholders, and the dialogue with investors is a major lever that we mobilize as much as we can. We're going to continue to do this in this format, which I believe was well appreciated.
In the same vein, to improve the functioning of our board and also making it more effective, and in view of the many changes carried out over the past two years within the board, in 2022, we assessed with an external firm, the quality of our work, the robustness of our processes, and also showed that we had to continue our strategic thinking, more particularly on merger and acquisition issues, and also the ramp-up of the CSR committee. Dear shareholders, you can count on a board with a balanced and diverse composition, which is a guarantee of its efficiency and its relevance. Each of its members brings a different point of view, its experience and its background and uniqueness, which gives us different opinions.
I would like, in particular, to pay tribute to the two members representing the employees, and through them, the whole of Michelin's social body. Their contribution to our discussions is absolutely decisive. We have 45% women. One-third of our members are of non-French nationality, which is a great opportunity to better understand the reality of our group, which as you know, is present in 175 countries. The board is also diverse in the scope of its competencies. These must reflect the company's activities and its developments. We've taken care to detail the expertise of the board members who, among all of their skills and experience, are considered to be the most relevant to enable the board to fulfill its missions.
The mapping of the main skills of the board members presented in our annual report on corporate governance is an important element in the composition of the committees, as we'll see below. Just as your group is evolving, pursuing an ambitious strategy, the skills of the board members must evolve if the board is to continue to play its role to the full. This is an essential point to be taken into account when recruiting future members and in the Remuneration and Nomination Committee. In addition to the plenary meetings, the board conducts work in three committees, the Audit Committee, the Remuneration and Nomination Committee, but also the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee.
Each of the committee chairmen, as well as all of their members, are independent, with the exception, obviously, of the two members who represent the employees and who will contribute to the work of the Compensation and Appointments Committee and the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee. The Audit Committee, under the chairmanship of Patrick de La Chevardière, examined all of the group's accounts for the year 2022. It also reviewed the risk management and internal control systems. Particular attention was paid to cybersecurity and the group's policy in this area. The Audit Committee also worked on the subject of the reform of international corporate taxation, which has direct consequences on the group's policy, particularly when it comes to transfer prices.
The Audit Committee has been able to rely on the members who have strong financial skills in different areas, but also who have recognized skills in different fields such as digital technologies and security. In addition, the Audit Committee can rely on the skills of the other members of the board, and in particular, the members of the CSR committee with whom it held a joint meeting for the first time in 2022. This is necessary on many common topics such as the CSR risk matrix or the valuation of the group's negative externalities, for example.
The Remuneration and Nomination Committee has been working on preparing the future of your group through its work on the succession plan for the managing partners, conducted in close cooperation with SAGESP, the non-managing general partner, as well as the succession plan for senior executives and the Supervisory Board members. You know that the committee was particularly attentive to our policy from talent management and how to promote diversity and inclusion. Jean-Pierre Duprieu, its chairman, will present the committee's work in detail later on, more particularly the work done in terms of remuneration. Finally, I'd like to come back in greater depth to the work of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee. The subjects it deals with are becoming increasingly important, as we know, and we've seen this through the wealth and frequency of the new points that this committee has to deal with.
Under the chairwomanship of Monique Leroux, the committee relies on a wide range of skills, and you can find the details of these skills, as for all other members of the board, in the universal registration document. In particularly, the CSR committee reviewed the extra-financial performance statement and made recommendations for changes to key CSR performance criteria. It continued to do its monitoring work, as the committee chairwoman says, on regulatory developments, particularly at European level, and continued to analyze the steps taken by Michelin to classify its economic activities, what we call the taxonomy, in relation to the importance of their contribution to the European Union's environmental objectives. Even more than for the other subjects we deal with, the CSR committee is fully integrated into Michelin's management and governance structure.
It was presented with the principles for the steering of the CSR dimensions, whose governance is organized around four themes: environment, human rights, health, safety, and ethics, finally. The feedback from the stakeholder committee provides us with a valuable external perspective on this. In the area of Group's environmental responsibility, the committee analyzed the action plan for the climate, the biodiversity strategy, and the end-of-life strategy for tire products. I think it's important to discuss this issue, the Group's climate strategy with you, and more particularly, the transition plan. Michelin announced its ambition, as we heard already, to achieve zero net emissions by 2050, with the short-term priority of reducing emissions from all production sites and all transport operations in the supply chain with suppliers. All of this has to be done as much as possible.
We've analyzed the targets for 2030 to 2050 with regard to the means implemented to achieve these targets. With regard to emissions related to product manufacturing corresponding to direct emissions and those linked to energy consumption, what we call Scope 1, Scope 2, the Board appreciated the Group's ambitions marked by halving the emissions by 2030 compared to the 2010 base, before reaching complete neutrality in 2050. This trajectory, validated by the international Science Based Targets initiative consortium, is compatible with a global warming scenario of below 2 degrees Celsius. This obviously means that each business in the world and each of us has to make as much effort as possible. The committee's work also focus on action plans for Scope 3. This means indirect emissions through the value chain.
For all of our logistics operations, the Group is working on transporting less, transporting better, transporting differently, with innovations that are likely to reduce the associated emissions by 15% by 2030 compared to their 2018 level. Upstream of the value chain, the Group is attentive to reducing its emissions linked to the purchase of raw materials by ensuring the gradual integration of all of its suppliers into an externally controlled and validated emission scheme. This will be the case for 70% of them by 2024. That is 40% increase compared to 2022. The CSR Committee and the Board as a whole were able to appreciate the full integration of this strategy into the Group's overall strategy.
This is due to the high priority given to these issues by the Group's management, and more particularly the managing partners, who I would like to thank on behalf of all of the board members. In terms of the social and societal responsibility, the committee analyzed the integration roadmap for the acquired companies. In particular, we ensured the Michelin living wage principles were applied throughout the new Group scope. You can see that the committee had a lot of work cut out for in 2022 with major subjects for the Group strategy, and obviously, we reported back to all of the board members. I'd like to thank the chair men and women of these committees for the quality of their contributions. Now let me turn to the resolutions which will be submitted to your vote.
The first of these will be the ordinary financial resolutions. In particular, I'd like to invite you to approve the annual accounts for the year 2022. The board has once again been able to appreciate their excellence and their solidity. Jean-Pierre Duprieu will go into details on the resolutions relating to the remuneration of corporate officers. I should stress that these proposals are the result of in-depth benchmarking conducted by the Compensation and Appointments Committee. I've naturally excluded myself from these discussions that concern me directly, and the managers have done the same. Finally, you'll be asked to vote on the reappointment of 2 members of the Supervisory Board. The board is fortunate to be able to count on the competence and experience of Aruna Jayanthi since 2015.
Her keen sense of business and her insight into the use of new technologies, and in particular cybersecurity, are extremely valuable in a context where the challenges facing your Group in this area are multiplying. For my part, I've felt an intense sense of pride and responsibility since I joined the Supervisory Board of your Group, with a great deal of happiness since 2008, and this has been further strengthened since I took over as chairwoman in 2021, succeeding Michel Rollier. I'd like to thank you once again for the precious support during the transition period. I'll leave it to Jean-Pierre Duprieu to explain the council's proposal, or the board's proposal, in which obviously I did not participate.
To conclude, I'd like to send a message of gratitude on behalf of the board to all of the Group's employees. We've noted day after day, the remarkable results obtained, and this is thanks to the mobilization of each and every one of you in a very turbulent context. I'd particularly like to thank the management team, whose intelligent leadership and commitment to Michelin success were appreciated by the board.
I'd like to thank all of you, our shareholders, for this, wonderful loyalty and the engagement that you have. The adaptability and the capabilities demonstrated by your Group's team give full confidence in its ability to face difficulties and achieve its objectives. Thank you very much for your attention. I'm going to hand over to my colleague and friend, Jean-Pierre Duprieu. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I'm pleased to meet you again in this annual general meeting in order to present the work of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee. I'd like to thank my fellow members of this committee, each of whom brings his own or her own expertise and experience.
As Barbara Dalibard already pointed out, the Remuneration and Nomination Committee carries out in-depth work on such crucial issues as the remuneration and nomination policies for senior executives and the policy on diversity, inclusion, and talent management. Before you this morning, I will come back to three subjects in particular that have mobilized the committee that I chair.
I will also first inform you of the remuneration paid in 2022 to the managing partners and the members of the Supervisory Board. I will outline the proposed principles for the remuneration policy of the managing partners and the Supervisory Board members in 2023. Finally, I will submit you the proposed appointments for the expiring terms of the Board members. With regard to the remuneration paid to the managers for financial year 2022, on this slide, you have a summary of all the remuneration elements. As a reminder, the remuneration of the managers is subject to a decision by the General Partners and deliberation by the Supervisory Board. The variable part allocated each year to the managers comprises an annual variable part and a multiyear variable part, which are both subject to performance conditions.
In line with the group's All Sustainable strategy, the objectives set reflect both the company's financial performance, the development of people with employee safety, the rate of feminization of management, and the group's action in favor of the preservation of the planet and its resources. Obviously, CO2 emissions being large part of this. This meets the objective of encouraging managers to take long-term action in line with the interests of your group. The multiyear variable component is reflected in the allocation of performance shares. All the details of these remunerations are naturally included in the report on Michelin's corporate governance, which is included in the universal registration document 2022, published on the 7th of April. Barbara Dalibard received in 2022 EUR 120,000 for her duties as chair of the Supervisory Board.
This is the remuneration set in 2019 for the previous chairman of the board and has not changed since Barbara Dalibard was appointed as chairwoman in May 2021. On this table, you have the total remuneration received by the managing partners and the Chair of the Supervisory Board in 2022. The annual variable part of the management's remuneration is therefore related to the previous year, that is to say, 2021. This is also the case for the long-term incentive figures, which are calculated on the basis of previous results. The Remuneration and Nomination Committee also examined the equity ratios, applying the rules defined in the guidelines on remuneration multiples published by AFEP in 2021.
Now, this is the same methodology that I presented to you last year, taking into account both the evolution of the remuneration and its relation to the median and average remuneration within the organization. However, for the chairman of the executive board, the application of this methodology resulted in a double accounting of long-term remuneration for 2022. On the one hand, that of the performance share rights granted in 2022, but for shares not delivered before 2026. On the other hand, the payment in 2022 of a long-term remuneration granted in 2019 before the implementation of the performance share plans.
This factor, together with the re-evaluation of the fixed remuneration in 2022 to bring it into line with the market practices and one-off basis for the entire term of office, explains the very relative relevance of the ratios and progressions observed for this year. It seems important to the Committee that I chair to present the most complete information on this subject in order to ensure the consistency and comparability of financial years over time. The remuneration of the Board members for 2022 is determined on the basis of the overall package voted at the 2022 general assembly. They've been allocated in the following manner: 50,000 for each member of the Board, plus additional amounts for responsibilities, including chair, chairing or participating in one of the three Committees.
The payment of 60% of all these amounts is conditional on the members' attendance at the board and committee meetings. This table shows the amounts allocated for fiscal year 2022 and those paid in the same year for the previous year. I now turn to the committee's work on the 2023 remuneration policy for corporate officers. For the managing partners, the committee's proposals, they take into account their respective functions and the statutes of the managing general partner and non-general managing partner. They are in line with the 2022 policy. We therefore propose to maintain the fixed remuneration of Florent Menegaux and Yves Chapot at their current levels. Following the adjustments made in the previous year, these amounts will remain unchanged until 2026, so the end of their current terms of reference.
In order to ensure the greatest possible convergence with the company's performance, the variable annual remuneration of the managers will once again be based on financial, societal, and environmental criteria, reflecting the strategy of your group and capped at 150% of the fixed remuneration. In a further effort to increase transparency, you will note that for the first time this year, the managers' remuneration policy included in Michelin's corporate governance report presents the detailed calculation of the objectives set, at thresholds, the targets, and ceilings for all the quantitative criteria determining this annual variable remuneration. Long-term variable compensation will again be based on the granting of performance shares, as is the case for the group's employees.
As in the previous year, this allocation will be subject to performance criteria with a double capping and associated with an obligation to retain 40% of the shares effectively received during the term of office. On this slide, you will see the proposed remuneration package for the managing directors for fiscal year 2023. These elements seem to us to ensure that the planned remuneration is consistent with the company's performance and with market practices. The expiry of Barbara Dalibard term of office as member of the supervisory board at the end of this general meeting prompted the Compensation and Appointments Committee to carry out an in-depth work on the major role played by the chairman of the board and the remuneration associated with this responsibility.
We've analyzed the appropriateness of a change in this remuneration in the light of market practices. Part of the monitoring of the succession plan for this chairmanship, we've endeavored to preserve the continuity and attractiveness of this position, for which future candidates must have demonstrated the most appropriate skills and expertise. To this end, the committee conducted in 2022 a comparison of the remuneration associated with the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board of your group with that of equivalent positions within comparable groups. More specifically, we based ourselves on a perimeter of 28 CAC 40 groups with dissociated governance, which presented an average annual remuneration of EUR 600,000 for the Chairman of the Board.
We chose to exclude companies whose main activity is in the financial sector and companies where a former executive is chairman of the board. The scope is thus finally limited to 8 companies. The average annual remuneration of the chairman of the board for the latter perimeter stood at EUR 450,000. The board therefore proposed on the recommendation of the Compensation and Appointments Committee to upgrade the annual fixed remuneration of the chairman of the board to EUR 400,000 on the occasion of the renewal of the term of office. I would like to point out that Barbara Dalibard naturally excluded herself from the discussions on this point, which was brought to the attention of the board and the general partners at the initiative of the committee that I chair.
As regards the members of the Supervisory Board, the committee suggests adapting the distribution rules within the framework of an annual package of EUR 950,000 voted at the 2022 assembly. As in 2022, the remuneration of the Board members will be divided into a basic amount for each member and additional amounts according to individual situation and responsibilities, in particular within the committees. 60% of these amounts will continue to be directly linked to attendance at Board and committee meetings. Dear shareholders, I now come to the appointments we are proposing at this meeting, which you will be asked to vote on in a moment.
The Supervisory Board has asked the Compensation and Appointments Committee to review the term of office of the board members and to continue to implement a succession plan for board members in preparation for future term of office. In this task, the committee relies on the mapping of skills considered most relevant to enable the board to fulfill its missions. It draws up profiles to complement the expertise already present on the board, examines the applications, and calls on a leading external firm, recruitment firm for this purpose. Throughout the process, it also ensures that the diversity and inclusion policy is applied. Two Supervisory Board members, the mandates expired this year. Those of Barbara Dalibard and Aruna Jayanthi. The Compensation and Appointments Committee proposes, after thorough examination, the renewal of these two mandates.
Barbara Dalibard has been a member of your group Supervisory Board since 2008, and Chairman since May 2021. The committee underscored her competence and experience acquired in a career that has seen her hold management positions in the automotive and mobility sectors, as well as in new technologies, all of which are of decisive importance at Michelin today. All the members of the board also emphasize her essential role in the proper functioning of the group's governance, its interactions with the managers, with the non-managing general partners, SAGES, and in the direct dialogue it conducts with investors. Barbara Dalibard only served as Chairman of the Board for expertise in social, HR, and governance issues is especially appreciated.
Her expertise in IT, digital, and cybersecurity issues, consolidated by 38 years of experience in IT service companies, is invaluable, especially in her role as a member of the Audit Committee, where these subjects are increasingly important. On the recommendation of the committee, the Supervisory Board therefore also decided to recommend the reappointment of Aruna Jayanthi for a period of 4 years. I thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Jean-Pierre. Thank you very much, Barbara. Dear shareholders, our annual general meeting is always a privileged opportunity to share news about your group, to explore the challenges we're facing, and the solutions that we want to provide. This year, we would like to take a closer look at a central topic at Michelin, i.e., reducing the environmental footprint of our products and services.
In line with our vision of Everything Sustainable, this imperative is a strategic priority and a major lever for preserving our planet and its resources. I would like to invite Brigitte Chauvin, Director of the Sustainable Materials Program, Cyrille Roget, Director of Scientific Communication and Innovation, and Aurélien Parry to join us to present Michelin's approach to these different questions. Hello, everyone. Hello, Brigitte, and hello, Cyrille. Now, we've already talked this morning about the Everything Sustainable approach, of which the environment is one of the three pillars. Cyrille, what are the biggest challenges facing the group in this area? Well, for over 30 years, the Michelin Group has been committed to reducing its environmental impact by conducting its operations in an exemplary manner, but also by design, designing ever more innovative products, services, and solutions to contribute to the progress of sustainable mobility.
The environmental challenges are multiplying today, especially for our tire business. The automotive market, as we all know, is undergoing profound changes. Vehicles must meet the demands of consumers for more comfortable, safer, and more technological vehicles. Regulatory changes such as emission standards and crash tests are becoming increasingly stringent. The vehicles are getting bigger and heavier. In addition, to these constraints, we have tires that have to be fitted to heavier vehicles. This means bigger brakes to be able to brake efficiently, and larger wheels as well, and larger tires that require more raw materials. We know that it is important to adapt to the urgency of climate change, and this shows that all-season tires are gaining a lot of ground.
Then, electric vehicles that require for us to adapt in terms of noise, energy efficiency, and resistance to abrasion. In this new landscape, a major imperative is added and dominates all the others, the reduction of the environmental impact of our products. In order to reduce the environmental footprint of tires, the industry is subjected to many injunctions from many stakeholders, including citizens, consumers, manufacturers, regulators, competitors, or investors. We must also combine this with our own ambitions for progress. These injunctions cover the need to limit and fight against global warming, the depletion of natural and fossil resources, and also the protection of biodiversity.
In addition to this, we have levers, such as, for example, increasing recyclability, the quantities of recycled or bio-sourced materials, increasing the lifespan of products or their repairability, increasing their energy efficiency, reducing particle emissions, and recovering products at the end of their life cycle. Now that all these levers are known, I imagine it's easy? Well, no. Unfortunately not. That would be too easy. Progress on the one front can actually lead to a setback on another. This is what we call the impact transfer. Let me give you an example. The rate of renewable or recycled materials. Today, we could actually make a tire with 100% renewable or recycled materials, and yet its energy efficiency, performance, or lifespan would be significantly reduced. This wouldn't be a progress in terms of our footprint.
It would be the same thing with a tread that would have much more recycled materials, but with low-performance recycling technologies. This means that we have to boost our performance in this respect. The challenge is to manage the complexity of these multifaceted issues and identify the most important levers to effectively and significantly reduce the environmental footprint of our products while maintaining a balance between our three key pillars: profit, People, and Planet. Brigitte, how can we reconcile all these imperatives? How does the Group take into account its environmental footprint in its choices and decisions? Wanting to reduce our environmental footprint means working on all aspects at once. Not on just a few taken separately.
No, on all of them and at the same time in a global approach, a holistic approach, precisely to avoid the type of impact transfers that Cyril has just mentioned. I would like to mention that this is something we have to avoid because it involves improving something on one side, but with less performance on the other side. This means taking into account all possible environmental impacts, such as impacts on water, air, soil pollution, extraction of fossil fuels, and so on. Also all the phases of the life cycle of our products and services, from the raw materials required to the end of their life, including all the stages of manufacture, logistics, and use. Basically, from the cradle to the grave.
The tool that will enable us to reach this is what we call the life cycle assessment, and we are systematically using it to widespread our environmental impact assessments to all our products and services. As you can see, from this example of the passenger car tire, the usage phase has the greatest impact on the environment ahead of the use of raw materials. Now this impact measurement takes into account both carbon emissions and resources, for example? Yes. No less than 16 environmental impacts are assessed in total in the life cycle assessment, including the impact on global warming, for example, greenhouse gas emissions, and also on the use of natural resources. Is this analysis carried out at company level or product by product? Well, it's done by product. In fact, we should even say by product plus service.
The proposal of a product only makes sense to meet a need. For example, to fulfill a function expected by the user. The analysis must therefore take this function into account. Let me give you an example. If the function of a tire is to be able to drive a passenger car for 60,000 kilometers in Europe before it needs to be changed, and you offer a tire with a wear life of 60,000 kilometers, then to carry out the life cycle analysis, you would have to consider 4 tires. But if you offer a tire with a wear life of only 30,000 kilometers, then 8 tires and not 4 should be taken into account for this analysis. You'll understand that this can significantly change the assessment of the environmental impact it generates. Well, in fact, the genesis of a product is key.
80% of all environmental impacts are determined as early as the design stage. This is why we widespread the practice of this life cycle analysis in an eco-design approach that we also apply to all our new products and services. As the use phase is an important part of the life cycle analysis, what are the avenues to reduce its impact? Well, there are three levers to reduce the environmental footprint. First of all, rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is of the utmost importance as it directly affects CO₂ emissions of all thermal and electric vehicles, and Michelin is not a newcomer in this field. We invented low rolling resistance tires more than 30 years ago. Since then, our relentless efforts to increase the energy efficiency of our products have enabled us to cut the rolling resistance of our tires by more than half.
This is very important because more than 30% of the impact of the tire is produced because of rolling resistance. Let me remind you that 1 in 5 full tanks is consumed by the tires because of rolling resistance. On an electric vehicle, this plays a role twice. Once when driving and also with a regenerative braking. The tires absorb part of the energy that should go back into the battery and therefore plays a role in terms of autonomy, therefore the energy that is needed to make a journey. Now after energy efficiency, what is the most important lever? Well, second one, longevity. This is another advantage of Michelin tires, and often one of the first reasons for our customers to choose a Michelin tire.
This is something that is recognized by the industry, as you can see, on this slide with the ADAC results published in 2023, the German Automobile Club. The most important characteristic of a durable product is that it should last, and this longevity conditions the number of times that you have to replace your tire, therefore extract the materials, secure the tires, transport them, and so on. Longevity is also associated at Michelin with very high levels of performance throughout the life of the product, so that our customers can use their tires in complete safety until they wear out. This longevity accounts for 20% of the tire's environmental footprint. The more energy-efficient tires that last longer. Is there another way to limit the environmental impact of their use? The third lever, because we did mention three levers, wear particles.
They account for almost 10% of the tire's environmental footprint. The amount of particle emissions is a true performance of the tire and is measured in grams per 1,000 kilometers. This is a performance in which Michelin has been involved for many years in order to develop tires that emit as few particles as possible. The ADAC, the German Automobile Club, published a study in March 2022, which clearly shows Michelin's leadership in this area compared to its premium competitors. Michelin, on average, emits 28% less particles than its premium competitors, which is huge. Manufacturers have a strong responsibility in the design of their tires because it can vary from 1 to more than 4 in the ratio between the best tires and the worst.
For example, if we take into account this study published by the ADAC on 100 tires and the result of Michelin studies on more than 2,000 tires, we come up with the following observation. Here you can see the quantity of particles emitted by four tires on a car that covers 20,000 km per year. The difference goes from 1.6 kg for Michelin tires per year, so the four tires, to 3.6 kg for the average of the tires tested, but up to 8 kg for the least efficient tires, which is enormous. This is why Michelin's mission is very much in favor of a threshold regulation that would allow the worst-performing tires to be taken out of the market everywhere in the world.
This is the case of the proposed Euro 7 regulation in Europe, which involves setting a threshold on tire particle emissions in Europe. All right, the use phase of the tire has a major impact on its environmental impact. I imagine that it's completely different for electric vehicle tires, since the carbon emissions are so much lower, right? Well, no, I still have to answer no, because the usage still represents more than 80%, even when we're talking about electric vehicles. To date, energy is not decarbonized enough, and the tire contributes to absorbing part of the energy of the braking, regenerative braking. Electric vehicles also require larger tires because they're heavier and they use up more material. Because of their mass, they emit more particles per kilometer covered.
I see that raw materials make up the second major impact of tires on the environment. What are the levers that we can actually activate? We will always need as much material to make a tire. Here we're talking about the use of resources, i.e. the removal of the materials that we take from the planet. The first way to reduce this is obviously to use less material or to use it better so that it lasts longer. This is what we call the frugality lever. You can activate this, for example, by reducing the mass of tires or by increasing their life expectancy, or by improving their retreadability or their repairability, i.e. their ability to make several lives with the same original carcass by only changing the worn tread.
The second solution is to use materials that are either renewable, for example, natural materials that the Earth can regenerate within a human lifetime, or recycled. Here we're talking about recycled material, and basically, this is what we mean by sustainable materials. We're reducing our impact on raw materials. Does this result in a compromise and an increase in the impact on the usage phase, for example, because of a deterioration in performance? No, no, no. Out of the question to reduce our tires' performance. By 2022, we will have manufactured road-approved bus and car tires with 58% and 45% sustainable materials. This means increases of +50% and +100% respectively compared to current levels.
We've done this by maintaining the excellence of all their performance at the same level as the Michelin premium tires on the market today. Now, we've tested these tires on the road, and you have an example here of a bus tire here with 58%. We are extremely proud to have been honored for these tires with the Environmental Achievement of the Year Award at the Tire Technology Expo in March of 2023, given by the industry. You know that whenever we're talking about tire performance, obviously, it's going to have an impact on their usage phase, and therefore, it's going to have an impact on their environmental footprint. You'll have understood that for us, this is totally out of the question.
This, even though the challenge is huge, 'cause in order to reach 100% sustainable materials in the tires, we will have to be able to succeed in doing so by changing the 200 or so raw materials that are currently of fossil origin that make them up. Is it realistic to imagine a tire made of 100% sustainable materials? Well, you see, in 2022, we already designed tires with 50% sustainable materials with the same premium performance levels as current Michelin tires on the market. Yes, we are very confident, and we will be able to make tires at much higher rates in the course of this decade, 60%, 70%, and even more in the following ones, up to 100% by 2050.
The most difficult thing will certainly be, as it is very often the case when we're looking for these, this absolute goal, to go and find the last few %, and above all, to go and find them for all our tires. We are extremely confident. Generally speaking, over the whole life cycle, are you also confident? We can significantly reduce, and on a very large scale, the environmental footprint of our products and services on a large scale without degrading the essential performance for which Michelin is known. Life cycle analysis guides us on our priorities, and these are already Michelin's areas of expertise and leadership. Rolling resistance, longevity, particle emissions, work on renewable and recycled materials, all of this is already well underway. Finally, we're working in parallel to continue to make our plants more sustainable.
This is also the case for logistics. We're determined to transport less, transport better, or transport differently. We are fully confident in our ability to achieve our goals. I hope that you now share this confidence with us. Thank you very much for your attention. Merci beaucoup, Brigitte.
Thank you very much, Brigitte. Thank you, Cyrille, and thank you, Aurélien. The competitive edge of Michelin, this is where it resides, and you've had a great example of 120,000 bibs, which are a reference in terms of performance across the globe. Thank you for this very clear explanation.
Now, Michelin is reducing its environmental impact as well, thanks to its rigorous and comprehensive approach, and this is the only possibility to go beyond the announcements, but also to obtain tangible results. As you know, one of our fundamental values is respect for facts, and the facts are there. The facts speak for themselves. Your group also uses its capacity for innovation to help reduce its customers' environmental impact. Just by way of example, I'd like to show you one of these new activities, which is called Watèa by Michelin.
Watèa by Michelin is the Michelin Group's response to helping fleets decarbonize and helping them manage the complexity of implementing electric mobility. Helping mobility is the story of the Michelin Group. The MICHELIN Guide helped electric vehicle owners find charging stations. Since 1922, Michelin has helped fleets better manage their tires. Today, Watèa by Michelin is the heir to this story. It is also an incarnation of the Michelin Group's strategy to innovate beyond the tire.
With Watèa by Michelin, we help our clients, owners of utility vehicles, to decarbonize. Concretely, the Watèa offering is an all-in-one subscription that includes the vehicle, access to energy, digital services for the driver and the operator to master the electric utility vehicle, and it is also, above all, end-to-end support from the design phase of the electric conversion project to the operation phase of the vehicles.
Beyond being a concrete response to major environmental issues, Watèa by Michelin is also a solution to gain efficiency in managing the customer's fleet, gaining efficiency is also gaining profitability. The first results of Watèa by Michelin are very encouraging. L'investissement de Crédit Agricole dans Watèa by Michelin va nous permettre une accélération très forte de notre activité. L'ambition de Watèa, c'est de continuer à accélérer.
D'abord avec nos clients du dernier kilomètre, la livraison de colis, pour lesquels nous voulons leur donner accès à d'autres types de véhicules et surtout accès aux véhicules hydrogène. Nous voulons aller plus loin. Nous voulons aussi aider les clients de la construction, du service à l'habitat, les ascensoristes, les plombiers, les plaquistes, qui eux aussi ont besoin d'avoir accès à une mobilité décarbonée.
La véritable fierté des équipes de Watèa, au-delà de la réussite économique, c'est qu'à chaque fois que nous mettons à la route un véhicule utilitaire électrique, nous arrivons à économiser jusqu'à 12 tons de CO₂ par véhicule et par an. Ça, c'est notre grande réussite. Chez Michelin, nous avons la conviction que le progrès technologique est une des réponses aux grands enjeux environnementaux. Watèa by Michelin en est une illustration qui met l'innovation au service d'une société plus propre.
Thank you very much to Pascal Nouvelot and all of the teams who done such a remarkable jobs with Watèa by Michelin. This is revolutionizing the service for electric fleets. Thank you very much. Now, I'm going to move on the stage.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. The lights have gone down. I saw that there were so many of you here now in this room. Thank you very much for this wonderful turnout to this annual general meeting and all of those who are listening online. Year-over-year, the annual general meeting of shareholders is really a key event in the life of your group, but also the development of your group. It allows you, as shareholders, to better understand our strategy, but also to discuss our common future.
It brings us together here in Clermont-Ferrand, which is the birthplace and the headquarters of Michelin. It was the starting point of an adventure that has taken it to every continent and 175 countries worldwide today. I'd now like to say a few words about your group, about its future, but also about the subjects that mobilize us fully every day.
Our Michelin Group, your Michelin Group, is doing well. As Yves has already shown you very clearly, we've achieved some very solid results in 2022. We've created value in a balanced way, value on each of our fundamental dimensions, people development, economic performance, and the protection of our planet. This performance is appreciable given the context in which it was achieved. Michelin has always had to deal with crises and has done so successfully throughout its long history.
The intensity of the latest crisis and the serial nature over time are new factors. The conflict in Ukraine, supply difficulties, inflation, the change in the relationship to the workplace, the resurgence of COVID-19 and its management in China, in particular, have had to have very heavy impact on our activities in 2022.
These brutal and often unpredictable events have a profound effect on our environment. Faced with these difficulties, our teams have redoubled their agility and their commitment. I'd really like to say thank you once again. I've already thanked them so many times. We've succeeded in rethinking our supply chains in often record time. We've also succeeded in offsetting the inflation in our transport, raw material, and energy costs, whose structural increase poses a particular threat in the industrial world. This is particularly the case in Europe.
Thanks to everybody's mobilization, our group, your group, has emerged from this year with renewed confidence, renewed confidence in our ability to overcome these obstacles. I'd like to salute once again all of my staff and express my deepest gratitude to them. Our Michelin in Motion Strategy 2030 is well underway. You've had different examples of this today, and we are growing in and around and beyond the tire with significant advances in each of these three areas by 2022. For example, let me take tires. We're continuing to innovate, as you've just seen, to build the future of mobility. In all segments, the excellence of our products and the strength of our brand are recognized by our increasingly demanding customers for whom we're always creating more value.
One of our priorities is to support the movement towards vehicle electrification, which places tires at the heart of expectations and presents new opportunities for Michelin as a leader. In 2022, we unveiled these road approved tires, which are approved and composed of 45% and 58%, as we saw respectively, of sustainable materials. This is just the start. On a like-for-like performance basis, I should stress that, we are more than ever convinced that innovation offers many solutions to the environmental and social challenges behind mobility. Around tires, we rely on the intimate knowledge that we've developed of our customers and their usages, but also their needs. Today, technology increases the potential of these fields around tires tenfold.
The innovative systems that we're able to deploy on vehicles, as well as artificial intelligence for data processing, this enables us to offer our fleet managers the best possible solutions for improved performance, but also for greater fuel efficiency. Our global offers are already accelerating the transition of entire fleets to electric vehicles. We just heard an example with Watèa by Michelin. The mobility data that we know how to use and manage is of crucial importance for new customers, but also for public and private infrastructure managers. Finally, the third chapter, beyond tires. Beyond tires, we're focusing our efforts and deploying our knowhow inherited from our deep knowledge of materials, their transformation and their layout. We do so where our added value is the strongest.
At material level, for example, at microscopic level, our breakthrough innovations in resins, biomaterials, and reinforcements have numerous applications in many fields in which Michelin was not expected. I'm thinking more particularly of the medical and the construction sectors. On the scale of the layout and combination of these materials at microscopical to macroscopic level, we've just heard the flexible composites at the heart of our business meet the critical needs of demanding industries, considering tires like a composite flexible, a very advanced material. Our knowhow, which is directly derived from the tire industry this year enabled us to offer much more powerful and durable belts this year. They're already being adopted by a lot of distribution centers for their conveyor belts. We're continuing to take part in the construction of new and emerging value chains with numerous potentialities.
I'm thinking in particular of hydrogen. Hydrogen, we're very advanced on hydrogen with our Sunview company. In our Michelin in Motion strategy, this makes us a lot more robust and less dependent on only the tire market, which as you know, has lots of volatility right now, and it's a very disruptive market. Let me talk about the conditions of growth, more sustainable growth and stronger growth. This is absolutely crucial in a context which is marked by geopolitical, social, and environmental uncertainty. This is not enough. We must continue to transform our group. We have to make our group more efficient and more relevant in this ever-changing world. In an increasingly competitive and changing world, obviously, we know that if we don't innovate quicker, then there's a risk.
Faced with this increasingly competitive environment, we're committed to creating evermore value. We are committed to valuing the quality of our people, our technology, but also our brands, which together create exceptional products and services for our customers. I've already said this. The value created is an accelerator in our strategy, more investment, more attractiveness and more opportunities. Faced with the profound renewal of the relationship at work, our I Am Michelin transformation initiative aims to make each and every one of us a full participant in our own development and also the development of Michelin. Throughout our history, our group has been at the forefront of innovation, inspiring new ideas and new approaches that always place people at the heart of our process. We continue to innovate in this area to attract and to retain the talents of the future.
Faced with the climate emergency that we've seen a few examples of already, we're focusing our efforts on decarbonizing our industry and all forms of mobility. We are accelerating our investments in the circular economy to reuse more and more materials and to extract fewer resources. We are taking action wherever we can and wherever we can have an impact. Starting with the use of our products, where each of our innovations in terms of longevity, rolling resistance, and energy efficiency has had a tenfold benefit, not only for our customers but also for the planet. We've just seen this in this film. In a world which is increasingly marked by geopolitical tension, our local-to-local approach, which consists in producing as close as possible to consumer markets, is both a resilience factor, but also a way forward for more sustainable globalization.
We strongly believe in this approach, which is an approach that respects local ecosystems and is responsible for the planet. I was talking about transformation. We are transforming ourselves as well. We have to transform ourselves to do better and faster by integrating new businesses. Our recent acquisitions of Fenner, Camso, Multistrada, Masternaut over recent years show the sheer wealth of synergies that we're able to create. Our ability to join forces with partners in joint ventures such as Solesis in the medical sector or Symbio in the hydrogen sector also bear witness of our dynamic management of our portfolio of activities to make the very best of our know-how. The world and Michelin are ever-changing. Innovation, however, remains at the heart of all of our activities.
The current period brings us back to what inspired Michelin's pioneering spirit and its unshakable faith in human progress and in innovation. This is our DNA. The challenges that we collectively face are real ones, but the world can count on Michelin to turn these challenges into opportunities. I'm convinced that these challenges will all lead to technological, social, and environmental progress that we're not necessarily aware of yet. I can assure you that visiting our research and development laboratories, visiting our plants as well. With the Executive Committee a couple of days ago, we visited these labs and these plants, which are constantly reinventing themselves. Meeting your group's teams, you have an example here in the room. Meeting these teams are really the best remedies for the prevailing pessimism.
Few companies can claim the same ability as Michelin to master the design of products, but also the design of products, the materials that make them up, and the processes that will enable their industrialization, and also the modeling of the impact of our products and services. This end-to-end capability is the key to the leadership of Michelin, the tire industry, but also Michelin's positions, and positions Michelin ideally to invent and provide innovative solutions to global challenges in the future. This is something we see every day. Our capacity for innovation creates value and accelerates our differentiation from the competition. None of this would be possible without the commitment and creativity of Michelin's teams, who are really at the foundation of each of your group's successes.
More than ever, we must be aware of this in order to take care of those people who make Michelin what it is every day. Our group, your group, is naturally exposed to the growing tensions in our societies. We've had a few examples already, and we see this every day, unfortunately. The events that we are going through and the changes in the current world are increasing the anxiety that everybody feels in their personal and also professional lives. I'm convinced that this profoundly updates, and I'm convinced of this, that this profoundly updates the role of our company and the role that we must play in the development of our people and also in social cohesion. By developing a universal protection base, Michelin One Care, your group is taking a strong position that everyone within it should have access to.
We should all have access to a minimum of rights. This should apply regardless of the country to which you belong. In addition to the national social protections regimes, depending on local situations, Michelin will ensure that each of its employees can have a child in good conditions and see their family protected in the event of an accident or have access to quality care at an affordable cost. Your group is committed to verifying and to guaranteeing that all employees receive sufficient and decent remuneration so as to ensure decent living conditions for themselves, but also their families and loved ones. Beyond that, we want to be a learning company. This will be for the sake of everybody's development, but also our collective performance.
Our responsibility is to allow each employer to be a fully fledged actor of his own development according to his aspirations. The manufacturer of talents, which is based at our historic site in Cataroux, in Clermont-Ferrand, this manufacturer embodies this ambition for lifelong learning. I think we have a problem in the room. I think we need emergency help for somebody in the room. Are you feeling okay? Okay, thank you. I'm sorry about that, because obviously we're sitting down and it's not great for blood circulation, so if you need to stand up just to stretch your legs, please do so. We can't give a glass of water to everybody, but I'm with you. I know how hard it is sometimes.
Our requirement for social cohesion goes beyond the strict framework of our company. It is our entire external ecosystem and the communities that make it up, that links us and which must be strengthened. Michelin ensures this wherever we're present, and our responsibility towards our regions and the communities where we're present is also expressed when we have to make, unfortunately, some very painful decisions to close a site, for example, or to restructure an activity. What better way to be truly and united than to project ourselves towards a more desirable future? Despite the difficult environment, I'm very optimistic at Michelin. We're all very optimistic, and I'm personally convinced that this is a vital need for any human collective, whether we're talking about a team, a company, or even a country.
In our shaken, fragmented, and uncertain world, we all need to hope, and we all need to believe in a better future. We need to build this future together. I hope you feel better. Your group has always distinguished itself by its ability to make the seemingly impossible possible, and we do this on a daily basis. Having a common dream and giving ourselves the means to achieve it is what we continue to do at Michelin. Our corporate dream, this is the driving force behind our innovation. It also enables us to consider new options and encourages us to go beyond the boundaries of what seems possible. This dream, our dream, is a dream that we have built together with all of our employees, and we dream. What is this dream?
Well, we dream that in 2050, Michelin will be recognized as a leader in innovation, a leader whose actions have been decisive in helping humanity cross new frontiers. I think this is a dream that we can make come true together, dear shareholders. I have full confidence in our group's ability, your group's ability, to meet the many challenges ahead of us. I think we'll be able to fulfill our collective dream. In following the course set by our Michelin in Motion strategic plan, Michelin will continue to grow. It will continue to grow in, around, and beyond tires, and this will be for the benefit of all of its stakeholders. I thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for your trust, but also for your kind attention. I have a bit of a problem with the mic. There it is. Thank you.
Now it's a great pleasure for me to hand over to Benoît Balmary, who's on my left, who's going to present the main points of the 16 resolutions which are submitted. Don't forget, you're here to vote on these resolutions or not. He's going to talk about the main points of the 16 resolutions which are submitted for your vote. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, we remind you that all of the documentation was published in the legal deadlines. I'll give a summary of the resolutions since their full text has already been published in the official journal. The text of the resolutions and the detailed reports of the chairman and the management board and the supervisory board were published on our website on the eleventh of April and sent to each shareholder with the notice of the meeting.
In line with regulations, we collected your paper votes until midnight on the ninth of May and electronic votes until yesterday at the eleventh of May at 3:00 P.M. First, we're going to submit the ordinary resolutions for your approval and then the extraordinary resolutions. With regard to the ordinary resolutions, the first resolution concerns the approval of the annual accounts for the financial year 2022, which show a profit of EUR 544,575,000 for the holding company, Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin. The third resolution concerns the approval of Michelin Group's consolidated accounts for 2022, which show a net result of EUR 2,008,883,000.
As no regulated agreements were concluded during fiscal 2022, it is proposed in the fourth resolution to acknowledge that there were no such agreements to be approved. The second resolution that we've submitted to the shareholders, the approval of the payment of a dividend of EUR 1.25 per share, which represents the payout ratio of 44% of the net income. The dividend will be paid as of the 19th of May 2023. We've explained, in order to avoid a dilutive effect on the share, no payment in shares is proposed. The fifth resolution concerns the renewal of the authorization given to the company for a period of 18 months to trade in its own shares within the frame of a share buyback program for maximum amount not exceeding 10% of the company's share capital.
The maximum purchase price per share is EUR 55 per share. This authorization is a continuation of that given by the general meeting of the 13th of May 2022, with the maximum units to purchase price adapted to take account of the four-fold split in the nominal value share of Michelin shares from EUR 2 to EUR 0.50, decided on the 16th of May 2022 and effective on the 16th of June 2022. The description of this new buyback program is set out in chapter 6 of the universal registration document 2022. The proposed authorization could not be used during a public offer period. The implementation during 2022 of the existing buyback authorizations is also detailed in chapter 6 of the 2022 universal registration document. The Chairman of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.
Jean-Pierre Duprieu has just presented to you the elements of the remuneration policy for the executive directors established by the general partners and the Supervisory Board of the company for 2023. The remuneration policy of the managing partners and the policy, that's the 6th resolution, and the Supervisory Board 7th resolution for financial year 2022 are submitted for your approval. The main features of this policy are detailed in the Corporate Governance Report in chapter 3 of the universal registration document 2022. The Chairman of the Compensation and Appointments Committee also presented earlier the elements of the remuneration due or awarded to all of the company's corporate officers.
This year, the general partners and the Supervisory Board of the company are submitting for your approval to the ordinary general meeting and the eighth resolution, the information relating to the remuneration of all corporate officers paid during 2022 or allocated in respect of that year. In the ninth, 10th, and 11th resolutions, the individual remuneration elements paid during 2022 or allocated in respect of this financial year to the company's executive office by virtue of the office held during this financial year. These resolutions concern respectively Mr. Florent Menegaux, General Manager and Chairman of the Management Board, Mr. Yves Chapot, General Manager, and Mrs. Barbara Dalibard, Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board.
These remuneration elements have been established in accordance with the remuneration policy presented in 2022 for the financial year in the Corporate Governance Report in the universal registration document 2021. As the Chairman of the Compensation and Appointments Committee has reminded you, the terms of office of Barbara Dalibard and Aruna Jayanthi expire at the end of this ordinary general meeting. The process for the review and selection of the candidates and the presentation of the candidates is detailed in the Supervisory Board's report on the drafter resolutions included in the 2023 general meeting notice, and also in chapter 7 of the 2022 universal registration document.
In accordance with the company's articles of association, only the Supervisory Board, 89% of whose members are independent, including employee members, can recommend to the General Meeting the members who will represent their shareholders on the Board. As an essential guarantee of the separation of powers, none of the general partners intervene in these choices or can take part in the vote on appointments at the General Meeting. The shares they hold being excluded from the quorum for each resolution. At the end of this process, the Supervisory Board decided unanimously with interest members abstaining to ask the Chairman of the Management Board to propose to the General Meeting in its 12th resolution, the reappointment of Mrs. Barbara Dalibard, and in the 13th resolution, the reappointment of Dr. Aruna Jayanthi.
These appointments are proposed for a term of 4 years, i.e., until the end of the general meeting called to approve the accounts for the year ending 31st December 2026. After the ordinary resolutions, I will now summarize the other extraordinary resolutions. The purpose of the 14th resolution is to allow the allocation of free shares to beneficiaries, employees, and executive directors of the company and employees of French or foreign companies of the group. Following on from the authorization approved in 2020, this year's resolution aims to, first of all, adjust the performance criteria to take into account the Michelin in Motion strategy and to allocate up to 250 shares without performance conditions, with only a condition of presence to a larger number of operators, employees, technicians, and middle managers in order to continue to develop their involvement in the company's results.
This resolution replaces or would replace the 25th resolution approved by 97.02% of the votes at the combined general meeting in 2020. The characteristics and interim results of the performance targets of the corresponding plans are set out in chapter 6 of the 2022 universal registration document. The purpose of the 15th resolution is to reduce the share capital of the company by canceling shares acquired under an authorized share buyback program for a period of 24 months. This delegation replaces the resolution authorized by the general meeting of the 13th of May 2022, 28th resolution. The implementation of the buyback authorization in force during the financial year 2022 resulted in the cancellation and corresponding capital reduction of 4,326,536 shares.
The 16th resolution pertaining to the powers to carry out the formalities associated with this combined general meeting does not call for any particular comments. Thank you very much for your attention.
Congratulations, Benoît. You actually managed to make this description of resolutions glamorous. Congratulations. I'm now going to open up the general discussion. In accordance with the possibility offered by law, the answers to the written questions before the general meeting have been published on the company's website. I propose that we begin this session with questions from the floor, and then we will answer the questions that you have sent us remotely on the dedicated email address. I will first give the floor to the members of the Michelin Shareholders' Committee.
Hello, everyone. Therese Bonnet, member of the Michelin Shareholders' Committee. I have a question concerning the people dimension. You talked about Michelin's objective for 2030. Which involves reaching 85% of employees who feel engaged, and you gave us some examples. Could you expand on this and maybe provide us with the concrete examples of initiatives or programs? Thank you very much for your question. I'm going to give the floor to someone who's an expert in this field, because you have the group's executive committee, and Jean-Claude Pats is going to answer your question. Thank you very much for this question. Hello, everyone. You're right, I confirm that this is our objective, 85%. Just to set the scene, this is something that was mentioned by Yves Chapot earlier on.
This engagement rate increased by 3% last year, we're on the right track. Just for your information, today the Michelin Group is divided into 9 regions, and we have 4 regions today with an engagement level more than 85%. Now, how can we assess this engagement rate? We ask 4 questions. The first question has to do with the pride of belonging to Michelin. The second question is, would you be ready to recommend joining the Michelin Group? Here again, we have the answers above 85%. There, there's a third question that has to do with our working environment, and here again, the answers are very positive for 85% of them. For 3 out of the 4 questions, we're above 85%. There's 1 question where there is a slight gap.
The question is as follows: If you received an equivalent proposal in terms of salary and in terms of job description between what you do at Michelin and what you would do elsewhere, 74% stated that they would stay with Michelin. That's where we can further improve our performance. Now we're working on different fronts. Let me give you 3 examples. First of all, managerial quality in order to people to feel that they belong to the group. We don't want them to want to work elsewhere, and this means that in terms of management, the quality of management has to be as high as possible with a lot of initiatives in this field.
The second front we're focusing on, especially after what we call the manufacture of talents, we want to make available to our employees tools that will enable them to develop their skills in terms of job skills, but also their personal fulfillment. What we call the employee experience, their experience on a daily basis. Here again, we can always do better, and it is by focusing on these three fronts that we will be able to exceed this ambition of 85%. Thank you very much. Second question, Madame Karine Poty, Member of the Michelin Shareholders' Committee. This is my question. Thank you very much. Michelin is going to link up with Scandinavian Enviro Systems and the French investor Antin in order to create the first tire recycling entity.
Can you tell us a little bit more about this? Yes. I'm going to give the floor to Maude Portigliatti. Thank you very much for this question. We're extremely proud of linking up with these two entities. We're going to create the first tire recycling group on a global scale. This joint venture will focus on a patented and a unique technology designed by Enviro. We're going to transform these tires into carbon black and into oil thanks to a pyrolysis technology. By 2030, the recycling capability should reach 1 million tons in terms of tires, which is considerable. The first plant will be located in Sweden, and it will be fully operational by 2025.
We can contribute to this joint venture with our resources, our expertise, we assigned a multi-annual agreement in order to supply them with our raw material or our material. We're extremely proud of this joint venture. This really testifies to our desire to engage in the circular economy and to take a part in highly innovative partnerships. Thank you very much. Third question asked by Mr. Anthony Cattenez, also a member of our Michelin Shareholders' Committee. Good morning, everyone. My question is as follows: You work with RLU in Indonesia, you acquired control, a stake in the company. What is your assessment of this partnership? I'm going to ask Manuel Montana . To answer this question.
Until recently, because he joined the executive committee recently, until then, he was in charge of the E2A region, so Southeast Asia, excluding China. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for this question. In 2015, Michelin linked up with a local partner, Barito Pacific, for the development of sustainable hevea trees in this region. We found some land that was actually devastated by deforestation.
I can tell you that today, Michelin can be extremely proud of the work carried out over the last 8 years, with a lot of breakthroughs from a social standpoint, with the creation of 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, but also from an environmental point of view, with the thousands of hectares that we've been able to save thanks to the work carried out by our teams in Indonesia. We're still fully aware of the challenges that we have to rise to in the years to come because the value chain, if we consider natural rubber in Indonesia, this chain is extremely complex and fragmented.
By becoming a single owner of this entity, Michelin is reaffirming its trust in this project and also its confidence with regard to our long-term ambitions, i.e., the production of natural rubber while improving the quality of life of local communities. Thank you very much. This is an extraordinary project. It's not perfect yet, but we're getting there. We're now going to give you the floor. Thank you to those shareholders who wish to ask questions. Please. We have hostesses with roving mics, so you will be given a mic. Before asking your question, please state your name. To the left here we have a question. Please raise your hand so I can see who's asking for the floor. Microphone number 5. Good morning. Christophe Lerouge.
I am an employee and a shareholder, and I'm also a union representative. I have a question that has to do with your wishes that you stated that you wanted a better distribution of wealth and more social cohesion. In order to make this a reality, what are the levers that you're going to activate in the years to come at company level? Thank you very much for your question. I think that capitalism went a little bit too far in terms of remuneration of capital. We had this tendency to forget that at the basis of any society, we have people. If wealth is not distributed enough, it becomes a real problem, especially labor, work.
It has to give rise to appropriate remuneration. This is one of the conditions for personal development. Concerning what I said, of course, capital has to be remunerated. You are shareholders. You actually took some risk by becoming shareholders, it is normal that you should get something back. When this remuneration is higher than the capacity for everyone to fulfill themselves in the framework of their job, that becomes a problem. That's why Michelin came up with different mechanisms. First of all, what we call a decent salary. For any group salaried employee with a family, we decided to select family of 2 adults and 2 children.
What we call decent salary should enable this family to feed themselves, but also to save some money, to have access to culture, entertainment, everything that enables people not only to continue living in survival mode, but to enjoy life. This is why we've implemented this concept of a decent salary everywhere, and we just make sure that it is applied everywhere. The second measure is the Michelin One Care approach. The idea is that during the COVID crisis, we became aware that, of the fact that there were some populations in certain countries that received absolutely no support from a social standpoint when faced with a challenge, with a difficulty in their life. For example, a health problems or someone dying in their family.
At Michelin, immediately we thought, "This is not something we can tolerate." Therefore, in addition to all the social measures in place available in countries, or not for that matter, we need a system that could actually take over so in order to make sure that the people would be protected enough for themselves, for their family, in order to be able to face the future. We want to guarantee a minimum level of social protection should such an accident occur. These are important measures, but we need to go one step further. Now, your question leads me to another comment that I wanted to share with you. In many cases we want to keep, at all cost, people in their job, whereas the economic conditions are no longer met.
You know that a company is a living entity that has to adapt itself. I think it's better to help people who lose a job, to help them find another job in another environment rather than maintaining a person at all costs in difficult and precarious situations. This is what Michelin has done in the past, and they will continue to do this in the future. It's a sign of good health to adapt ourselves, to transform ourselves. There are cases where an industrial site, a commercial site reaches the end of its life cycle, and we have to consider the recycling this entity. Of course, this means providing support to individuals who have invested a lot of time and energy in the development of this industrial or commercial site.
At the same time, we shouldn't keep a person at all cost. Here again, we have to take into account this notion of a decent salary. We will have the possibility of examining this in greater detail. I think that Michelin is a pretty good example in this field. Microphone 6. We have several mics, so please feel free to raise your hand. Mr. Bezanson. Can you hear me? No, we can't hear you. Could you please stand up? Because I can't really see you. Mr. Bezanson. Michelin is setting up their plants in countries where democracy is not a reality. We have to also understand that some of these plants can actually be taken over by the national entities.
Those are the case, for example, for Renault in Russia, Danone in China, where we lose our know-how and our patents. For shareholders, every time a main site of Michelin was transferred abroad rather than Europe, French individual shareholders had to suffer from that. Because this increases unemployment in France and social disorder. Here, I'm talking about the short and the long term, and also taxes to be paid on the dividends of French shareholders. In terms of environmental protection, pollution in China, where CO₂ emissions in China are extremely high. This represents about 60% of excessive CO₂ emissions since the 1970. Here I'm talking about the situation on a global level. What are you doing or what would you do to improve the situation and to help French shareholders? Thank you very much for your question.
Yves is going to help me answer. There are 3 aspects to your question. The first one has to do with China. Our 2 industrial sites in China are using renewable energies. 100% of the energy sources are renewable energy. We are very much advanced in this respect, although the country, and I agree with you, does use a lot of coal. We at Michelin, 100% of the energy we use is of renewable origin. 2nd question, here you established a link between the creation of an industrial site in a foreign country and the consequences for French shareholders. I do not totally agree, because in reality if you consider France and Michelin, we also profit from all the performance generated abroad. Of course, this has a knock-on effect on French shareholders.
Concerning reorganization programs, then I'll give the floor to Yves, who will talk a little bit more about our strategy. In terms of industrial streamlining, we have to take into account the fact that France, unfortunately, is no longer competitive from a salary point of view in order to maintain our industrial presence in such an environment. Here I'm not talking about the salary that is not competitive, but the cost of salaries in France. This can only be done for industrial sites that are focusing on high added value products or highly innovative products. You know that this reality evolves in time. This means that Michelin, in the field of hydrogen, for example, the first plant, the Symbio plant, is based in Lyon.
In terms of innovation and highly innovative products with a high added value, they're based in France. There are other activities that fell in this category in the past, but are no longer a part of these high added value products, and this means that we need a different approach for these industrial sites. Of course, this doesn't mean that individuals have to pay the price for this. We have to be extremely careful as to how we are going to consider the consequences for all of our employees. Our strategy in terms of foreign plants, if we look at our industrial footprint outside of France, we have to take into account the needs of local markets.
In China, for example, or Southeast Asia, these plants were built to meet a demand on the local markets. For a long period of time, we weren't really able to keep up with the growth rates on those markets, and this is why between 2010 and 2020, we decide to invest in those regions. To come back to what was said with regard to electricity, our environmental standards are the same, regardless of the country where we are present. We apply standards that are more stringent than what is required based on the local legislation. We have the same standards in Germany, in Brazil, in Thailand. The last point concerning consequences for individual shareholders in France, we had the opportunity to talk about this previously.
We decided to increase dividends, because we believe that this is a direct way of remunerating shareholders. Other companies have a different balance between their dividends and the buyback of shares. We know that the buyback of shares, they can lead to an increase in the value of shares in the long run. The increase of dividends to our eyes is one of the best levers to remunerate individual shareholders.
Because you know, investing in Michelin, there's a risk involved, and it is important to guarantee the right level of remuneration. Microphone number 8. Charles Mathey . Charles Mathey . I'm a private shareholder. Thank you very much for all these presentations. I would like to thank you. I would like to thank you for the quality of this annual meeting.
Throughout the year, we are informed of what Michelin is doing, in the framework of this general meeting, we have the feeling that we're actually part of Michelin and that's something that I truly appreciate. I have a very blunt question. Michelin in Motion. Now, we're convinced innovations, that's really part of your DNA.
You haven't really told us about what competition is doing. We are moving it forward, Michelin in Motion. Our competitors, of course, they are extremely active as well. Because, you know, there are several markets. You have a general public market. You talked a lot about the environment, our corporate responsibility, but then there's a premium market as well. There's a cost to be paid for that.
Tell us a little bit more about what our competitors are doing. Thank you very much for sharing your impression of this annual meeting. Of course, all these presentations have been designed for you. I understand this frustration because you are part of Michelin, but you're also outside of Michelin. We try to bring you back inside the company.
You know, like we are lucky. We can actually work at Michelin every day, so we know exactly what's going on. I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Vinesse, who is going to reassure you concerning the strength of our innovation. Before giving the floor to Eric, I wanted to reassure you. We talked to you about the result published by the ADAC.
There's a real gap between Michelin tire, abrasion, so the emission of particles when the tires wear out, compared with other premium tires, and this huge gap also exists in other areas. We could actually spend hours talking about this, but I'm going to hand over to Eric.
Thank you very much for this question. This is an important question because our world is changing very rapidly and it is absolutely essential to anticipate the needs of tomorrow. This has always been our strength. We have to position ourselves as a leader, and we have to maintain this leadership to act as a driving force. We have to exert an influence on the market to take into account the challenges of tomorrow.
If you look at our history, low rolling resistant tires, we were the first ones to anticipate this difference that we thought would be necessary, especially in terms of lower CO2 emissions. This is something that We've been doing for 30 years now, with the first silica tires in 1992. From a technological point of view, we're still the leaders in terms of energy efficiency. We also stated how important it is to offer tires that last longer in order to improve the customer experience. Of course, this is something that every consumer can experience today, but also with the better use of raw material, less rubber for a greater distance in terms of kilometers. Florent talked about this.
The results that were published a few months ago by the German Automobile Association shows that we have a 30% advantage over our competitors, which is huge. Less impact on the environment because there are less wear particles that are released into the atmosphere, we're still the leaders in terms of performance and time. Basically, our capacity to guarantee that the performance when you buy a tire will last as long as possible until you reach the wear indicator. For the final, the end user, it means a better management of the tire, the possibility of keeping them longer, they can feel confident about the safety of their tires. In terms of the environment, again, it's much better because we're using less material.
We can see that if we consider all our types of performance, for example, rolling resistance and we are the leaders in grip. We are the leaders. When we talk about a sustainable material, four or five years ago, when we were the first ones to announce very ambitious objectives, no one else was talking about this. Today, the entire industry is now trying to come up with similar objectives. We are both a leader and a pioneer to guarantee a better mobility and time.
Thank you very much, Eric. I think that deserves a round of applause, doesn't it? A more personal comment. I'm delighted to chair this group. I wouldn't like to be the chair of our competitors, really. Let's take some more questions. I can't see. Microphone number two, please.
Paul Stepanek. I'm an individual shareholder. I'd just like to ask a question about the development of tires and the link with electric vehicles. You were explaining earlier on that we've still got to make a lot of progress in this field. However, in R&D for these products, we do have a lot of competition, and you pioneered this new formula, which is becoming increasingly important, and you abandoned this to the benefit of Hankook. Why, please? Well, Scott. Scott, you can just answer that quick fire.
Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for that question. It's true, electrification is a very important inflection in the market today in the automotive sector, particularly in the competition. There's a lot of competition in this field. It's true, we were the sponsor of Formula E, and we would have liked to remain in that segment to show our leadership on tires for electric vehicles. But sometimes, you know, in competition, people are ready to pay a lot of money for a series such as this, and this is for the case for Hankook. But it's not particularly a big problem. Why? What are our objectives in terms of competition today? Well, the first thing is to accelerate innovation. That's what we do.
We use a competition to accelerate innovation, and that's what we do. We accelerate around durability and sustainability. For example, today, we've got a competition tire with 60% sustainable materials rate, which is twice the amount for our passenger vehicles and light trucks. So our idea is to test this in a very demanding and very difficult environment such as the competition environment. So this will help us in the future, and this will enable us to achieve a 100% sustainable materials objective. A second example or a second objective in competition today is to use competition to maximize the longevity and the performance of our tires throughout their entire lifespan. And this is exactly what we heard from Cyrille earlier on.
It's true that electrification series are important, but we can use other competition examples such as endurance competition, so to really develop and to reinforce our leadership on the market, particularly for electric vehicles today and in the future. This is something we're going to continue to do.
For example, we're part of MotoE, and in that field, the back tire of the motorbike is 50% sustainable materials. Once again, this is an opportunity for us to develop our expertise and our leadership on sustainable materials. Thank you very much, Scott. Maybe I could make a few comments on that. We haven't abandoned that, in fact, because as we already said, we weren't ready at the time.
We weren't ready to pay as much as our competitors, to drive more slowly. Formula E is driving on the same circuits, with time which is much, much, much lower than the times when they were fitted with Michelin tires. You know, a second comment, that's an issue for the organizers and the drivers. A second comment is that we are ready, Michelin is ready already for all of its materials and tires for all electric vehicles. We invested in this 50 years ago, thanks to the clairvoyance of the leaders of Michelin at the time. We worked on all of the layout, the re-layout of the industrial facilities so as to have the capabilities to enter this market.
This is not the case for our competitors, so we're in extremely comfortable position because all of our tires can be fitted directly onto electric vehicles today with the performance levels that we heard about with Eric Vinesse and Scott. Rest assured all is well on that field. Mic number 5, please. Bernard Moriffer. I'm an individual shareholder. Faced with the war in Ukraine, which is dragging on, our politicians and leaders are talking a lot about the sanctions against Russia and Putin.
I'd like to know what Michelin is doing in Russia right now. Thank you very much for that question. Let me hand over to Bénédicte de Bonnechose, who's supervising our European activities and was supervising Russia. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for that question.
Last year, during the annual general meeting, I had the opportunity to remind you that we'd taken the decision in March 2022 already to stop all of our activities in Russia, whether they were industrial or commercial activities. We've been working on that since then to try and come up with a solution to transfer the ownership of our assets to an industrial buyer locally. This is a project which is still in the course of negotiation and investigation, so it's a little bit too early to give you any more information on this today. However, what I can say is that we are really preoccupied throughout this period by finding a solution which enables us to support our employees.
Don't forget that in Russia we have 1,200 employees and more than about 800 people in our Davydovo industrial site to the south of Moscow, and 350 in Moscow. Our constant concern has been to find a solution for them so as to as much as possible protect their employment situation for employees there. Obviously, we'll have more information when we've communicated to our employees and when we're in a position to give you more information on that. Thank you very much. Microphone number 1, please. Good morning, Chair. Christian Bascu. I'm individual shareholder, and I'm very lucky because I have a local regional automotive club, and I sometimes go to the Michelin circuits.
I'm very lucky to be able to do that. I want to know why, despite your excellence in tires, why aren't Michelin tires approved by the Stuttgart manufacturers and why do you have to use Italian rubber? Scott, that's for you again. Scott has an answer for you on that. Well, sometimes it's a bit difficult with our Stuttgart friends. We do have with Porsche about 20%-25% share. They've got a very complex approach, very demanding approach to certified tires, and we're very happy with our technology and our performance levels. Sometimes they have other factors that they take account of, which they use in approving tires. We are a true partner of Porsche in motorsports. We are the only ones that have a partnership with Porsche.
They have a lot of respect for our technology and our innovation. Sometimes with the car manufacturers, the price level to be able to access cars for original equipment suppliers, the price level is such that we're not necessarily prepared to sell our tires at that price. Our level of technology and innovation require a higher price level or a higher price point. If we obviously need to sell tires on replacement, then we're talking about profitability levels of four or five times higher. It's not in our best interest, and it's not in the interest of shareholders to try and push for that and to push volumes and market shares in car manufacturers such as this.
This doesn't mean that we don't want to work with them, and we don't want to have privileged relations with partners like this. Obviously we have to always find the right price point and the smartest price point for everybody. This is the current situation with our friends in Stuttgart. I'm always challenging Scott and Scott's teams to reassure me that we always value our technology correctly because some of our competitors are really ready to discount their tires to values which are more compatible with different levels of technology. This might explain why we don't have the market share that our technology deserves. Microphone number 1 again, please. Good morning, Géraldine Bougon . I'm employee and Michelin shareholder. Cycling is good for your health, it's good for human beings, it's good for the planet.
I want to know what your position is with regard to bike tires. Well, you're right, yeah. Cycling is very good for your health, and it's good for urban mobility as well. Yes, you're quite right. I agree with you. Scott, once again, he's in charge of the bike tires. Well, thank you very much for that question. This is a good way for me to practice my French today. I need to practice French, I agree. I've just taken over responsibility for the bike segment, so I'm currently training on bike tires. It's true that the bicycle market, as you've said, is an enormous opportunity with enormous growth levels. We're currently trying to target the premium segment of bicycle tires. We're talking about electric bikes, we're talking about all-terrain bikes.
Well, we have very interesting technology, and we've got a lot of historic practice of off takes and manufacturing bike tires with external partners. We're currently looking at this situation. In view of the growth potential, the technology potential, we think that in future, this is something we should do ourselves. This is one of the strategic issues that we're currently reflecting on so that we can really exploit the fullest potential of the bicycle tire market. Obviously two wheels, motorbikes we excel, and then we're going to accelerate again for bike tires. Very good. I think we've more or less finished with the questions in the room, unless we have one final burning question here in the room. No. It's very cold in the room, I understand there's no burning questions.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for all of those questions. I'm going to hand over to... sorry. No. Let's take the questions online. There are questions online, let me take a look at the questions online. You said during your Investor Day in March 2023, you had a strategy for mergers and acquisitions. Are you thinking of financing that through a capital increase or through debt? What do you think? On the face of it, when thinking about doing it through debt, first and foremost, because as I said, we have indebtedness, a ration of about 25% of our equity, that's quite low.
Even if interest re-rates are increasing the debt rate for Michelin type companies should be a 3.5-4%. Sorry, I said 5% earlier. The cost of capital is very high. Well, we do have the ability to increase the indebtedness of the group to make acquisitions which create value for the group. Thank you very much. Uptis, when marketing tires, when are you going to start marketing the tires? It's good because we know it takes a long time for this type of innovation to come to market. Is this going to replace tubeless tires? The lifespan, is it going to be unlimited since this is replacing tread?
Is this technology going to have an economic impact for the company? Eric, you're going to answer that. Let's talk about the state of the art. Yes, Uptis. Well, a few years ago, this was a research demonstrator or research lab as such, the idea was to demonstrate so the fact that we could access airless performance for tires. This was absolutely extraordinary, but it was just a demonstrator. Now, today, we have in fact moved on to the next phase with the marketing with DHL in Singapore of a small fleet, which is fitted, well, about 50 vehicles, which are fitted with a series of a limited series still of these tires, Uptis tires.
Basically, we've achieved this level of confidence and this level of technological capability, which is now enabling us to go and experiment with this with somebody such like as DHL in real use conditions in this delivery environment with small delivery last mile delivery vehicles in Singapore. This is very important because you can imagine that if we have this object which behaves like a tire with all of the advantages of air but without air, airless. This requires highly innovative materials, which are very different materials, and we have to test these materials out in very varied conditions, and we've been able to show that it was feasible. A lot of people said it was impossible, but no, it's feasible.
We haven't solved all of the problems yet because we obviously have to exhibit, and we have to expose this product to varying use conditions, and we're currently in discussions with other stakeholders and players for other application fields. Obviously, we still have our work cut out for us, but it's a revolution. It's a technological revolution. It's a breakthrough. Any breakthrough takes time because we have to expose it to different conditions. I do think that we will have a breakthrough, and I think we are going to be able to make possible what everybody thought was impossible.
What will be the scope of this and what we'll be able to replace with this technology, it's too early to say, because we know that for the time being, we're just experimenting on this in real conditions, and this will enable us to come up with solutions for future years. Thank you very much, Eric, for that. What we can say, however, is that air is wonderful. It's free, you can compress it has many virtues, but a tire with air is intrinsically a lot cheaper than Uptis type tires where we have other components, even if they're brilliant components. This means that the applications are not necessarily to replace all tires with tubeless. With regard to your question, in fact, it's not really a tire.
You can't really call it a tire because a tire by definition, it's an envelope or it's a casing which encapsulates air. The question is more one of the unlimited lifespan. I think for the time being, we'll be able to recharge them. We don't know how many times we'll be able to recharge them. We're currently looking at these issues. Water management. Many countries are going through droughts, and this raises the need to have sound water management. What are you doing to track your water consumption and to decrease it and to treat water before you release it into the environment? Maybe I can hand over to Pierre-Louis Dubourdeau to answer this question, who's supervising all of our industrial facilities. He's going to talk about water management.
Yes, thank you very much for this question. The water question is not an isolated one because obviously when trying to reduce water consumption in industrial processes in general, we have to, in fact, reduce the recourse to energy. Basically, what we're doing right now is we're working on both levers, and a lot of our industrial processes use heat, either heated water or pressurized steam. We want to electrify this. When we electrify things, the good news is you have more energy efficient products. Also this enables us to stop using water for heat transfer. Basically, we're working on these two levers right now.
There are other initiatives which are focused on the quality of our emissions or release of water, particularly in areas where we have high water stress or high hydric stress. We have to work on the quality of our emissions, and we're working on different initiatives to improve the quality of the water that we release into the environment.
Very often we have much more stringent standards than the standards and the environmental requirements. The environmental requirements that we have are the same irrespective of where we are, and very often we draw inspiration from the highest and most stringent standards in developed countries such as France. There are 3 Chinese factories which have extremely high performance on the water they release into the environment and also the products they release into the air.
We have extremely stringent standards. Historically speaking, we used to measure the industrial performance of productivity and flexibility and client portfolios. You know that environmental performance is really a performance criterion that we attach a great deal of importance to, just as productivity and yield and so on and so forth.
Thank you very much. Unfortunately we won't be able to describe everything in detail, particularly when we're talking about environmental issues, because there are so many things involved when we talk about the environment. Water is part and parcel of our environmental roadmap. Sustainable materials. The processing of these materials is important, with colossal amounts invested for a whole series of value chains.
Why are you so confident in the fact that you'll be able to achieve this by 2050, which is a relatively a short time lapse from an industrial standpoint? Eric, why are you so confident that we'll achieve our objectives for 2050? Well, for many reasons really, because, first and foremost, we have this transformation speed and a lot of involvement and engagement on this issue. We're thinking about projecting ourselves in the future and securing our access to raw materials and sustainable materials in the long run.
We know that there's a great deal of mobilization around this issue, historic players, but also there are a lot of new players coming to the fore and coming to market with these very innovative ideas and who are going to prove their technologies in a few years. We're in a phase where there are so many innovative solutions coming to market. Also we have all of these industrial pilots which are currently testing these technologies to prove out the capabilities and feasibility of ramping up the volumes. We're currently working on a biosourced version of butadiene.
This year, for example, we've set up a first industrial pilot demonstrator, which enables us to assess the capability and the viability in the long term and the efficiency of this solution. Things are on the move, and things are moving very quickly. A lot of these solutions have already been validated for 2030. I think this will only accelerate more. This acceleration will be driven by the need to secure raw materials in the long term and to move away from fossil energy. Obviously the depletion of fossil fuels is only going to get worse, so we have to move away from fossil fuels and fossil energies as much as possible, and we have to be better than the legislation.
Thank you. Well, let's take the last question, because then we have a certain number of things that we have to do. We have a whole series of things to do. Last question. "What's the latest information for the latest Flexy railroad project with the French railways, SNCF Flexy?" This is a question for Laurent Frégaut , who's in charge of innovation and incubation activities. Thank you very much for this question. It's true that we do have a lot of projects in the pipeline which we're incubating. We have. We're very lucky at Michelin because we have Michelin innovation labs all over the world. We've got one which is working very, very well in Europe and which is located here in Clermont-Ferrand.
We have another one located in the U.S., another one in China, and another one in India. Now, one of the specific features of these innovation laboratories is the fact that they're very open to the ideas of our employees, and Watèa is a great example of this. Watèa was born in one of these innovation labs, and in the space of 2 years, somebody came up with an idea. Then, we brought this idea to market with the company and this company has now opened its capital to a large bank, the Crédit Agricole. Now also we have ideas from our customers. So we have, this project which consists in imagining these shuttles. These shuttles which are a lot more flexible to use.
These shuttles would be able to use railways, but also a multimodal approach. They sometimes would be able to use road sections as well. The French railways, SNCF, contacted us naturally because Michelin has this versatility and this understanding with regard to grip and the link with the rolling surface. That's probably why they contacted us to imagine this new mode of transport. We're currently working on validating the feasibility of this, and we are going to try and assess whether this is robust from an economical and technical point of view. I hope that we'll have more news to share with you at the next annual general meeting. Yes, thank you very much.
I'd like to give just some news of that person who unfortunately fainted earlier on. I hope it's not our fault, just to say that this person is in good health. They were able to go home. They're under medical surveillance, and they're feeling well again. That's very, very good news. Now the question and answer session is over, and I'm gonna hand back over to Benoît Bellemare , is going to give us the count for the quorum and remind you how the electronic voting system works. Thank you very much. To be able to deliberate, validate, our general assembly in order information, much, have 1/5 of the shares and voting rights have quorum. According to the latest counts communicated, the quorum has been reached.
Since we have, out of a total number of shares and voting, 714 million, et cetera, a total number of shares present or represented are 411 million. We are beyond the legal required quorum which is required. For our general meeting in extraordinary form, the quorum is one quarter of the shares entitled to vote. This gives us a floor of 170 million, and which is largely exceeded since we have a number of shares present, 411 million. In these conditions, both our ordinary and extraordinary meetings can validly deliberate. I'd just like to remind you that we will have electronic voting, and we'll have an explanation of how to vote electronically.
To vote, you have a voting terminal. This terminal is strictly personal and is used solely during this annual general meeting. When you are asked to vote, you will have a voting window which will open automatically on your tablet, even if your tablet is on standby. To vote, nothing simpler. All you have to do is press the button which corresponds to your choice: for, abstention, or against. Press Okay to validate your choice before the voting period ends. Once your vote has been validated, you can't change that vote. Please hand back your voting tablet when you leave the room. We'd like to wish you a very constructive annual general meeting. If your tablet is not functioning, please raise your hand and somebody will come and change it for you. Let's move on to vote for the resolution.
Let's start with the ordinary resolutions, which has to have a majority of votes of 50% plus 1. The first one is the approval of the accounts for financial year 2022. The vote is open. Don't forget to validate your vote by pressing Okay. The voting has closed. For 99.99%, this resolution has been adopted. Second resolution now. The allocation of the result for financial year 2022 and determination of the dividend. The vote is open. The voting is closed. For 99.99%, the second resolution has been adopted. The third resolution now. Approval of the consolidated accounts for financial year 2022. The vote is open. The vote is closed. For 99.99%, this third resolution has been adopted. Fourth resolution, regulated agreements. The vote is open. The vote is closed. For 99.98%, the fourth resolution is adopted.
Fifth resolution.
Fifth resolution, authorization to be granted to the managers or one, or to one of them to allow the company to trade in its own shares except during a public office period under a share buyback program with a maximum purchase price of 55 EUR per share. The vote is open.
The vote is closed. In favor 99.74%, the fifth resolution has been adopted. Sixth resolution, approval of the remuneration policy applicable to managers. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 93.82%, the sixth resolution has been adopted. Seventh resolution, approval of the remuneration policy for the members of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 99.65%, the seventh resolution was adopted. Eighth resolution, approval of the information on the remuneration of corporate officers. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 99.56%, the eighth resolution has been adopted. Ninth resolution, approval of the elements of Mr. Florent Menegaux 's remuneration paid during or awarded in respect to the financial year ending 31st December 2022. The vote is open. The vote is closed.
In favor 88.18%, the 9th resolution has been adopted. 10th resolution, approval of the elements of Mr. Yves Chapot's remuneration paid during or awarded in respect to the financial year ending 31st December 2022. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 97.78%, the 10th resolution has been adopted. 11th resolution, approval of the elements of Mrs. Barbara Dalibard's remuneration paid during or awarded in respect to the financial year ending 31st December 2022. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 99.85%, the 11th resolution has been adopted. 12th resolution, appointment of Mrs. Barbara Dalibard as member of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 97.81%, the 12th resolution has been adopted. 13th resolution. 13th resolution, appointment of Mrs.
Aruna Jayanthi as member of the Supervisory Board. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 99.56%. The 13th resolution has been adopted. 14th resolution, authorization to grant existing free shares or to be issued without preferential subscription right reserved for employees and the managers of the company and the employees of the group companies. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 87.04%. The 14th resolution has been adopted. 15th resolution, authorization to be granted to the managing partners or to one of them to reduce the capital by canceling shares. The vote is open. The vote is closed. In favor 99.76%, the 15th resolution has been adopted. 16th resolution, powers for formalities. The vote is open. The vote is closed.
In favor 99.99%, the 16th resolution has been adopted. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. I think this deserves a round of applause. There we go. Thank you very much, Benoît. Congratulations to Barbara Dalibard and Aruna Jayanthi for the renewal of your terms of reference, we're extremely happy to be given the chance of continuing to work with you. I wanted to thank all of you, all of you shareholders, individual shareholders or not that individual. Thank you for your trust in Michelin. This is something very important for us, this annual meeting is just simply an opportunity that we can take to thank you. Yves Chapot and myself, all the Michelin teams would like to tell you how much we are proud to represent your company.
There being no further business, I declare the meeting closed. Thank you very much.