Sat, Dec 06, 2014 page11

• Targeting French bashing

  Concerned the country’s cynicism is turning into self-doubt, its largest companies have organized a four-day forum called ‘Let’s bank on France’ in a bid to turn things around

  • By Angeline Benoit / Bloomberg, Paris
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  Since President Francois Hollande took office about two years ago, the outside view on France has more often than not been negative.

  The Economist magazine called France Europe’s “time bomb” in 2012; Newsweek magazine this year wrote about “The Fall of France”; UK newspaper The Independent caustically wrote about burnout “in the land of the 35-hour week, generous holidays and long lunches,” while Andy Street, chief executive officer of British retailer John Lewis, in October said France was “finished,” calling it “sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat.”

  Ever-sensitive to the regard of others, the comments have made the famously pessimistic French question their way of life as they struggle with an economy that has barely grown in the last two years and joblessness at a record high. Concerned the gloom is turning into self-doubt, the nation’s largest companies from phone operator Orange SA to the world’s biggest cosmetics maker L’Oreal SA have organized a four-day forum called “Osons La France,” or “Let’s bank on France.”

  

  Despite all the negativity it’s still Vive la Fra nce!

  Photo: Reuters

  “The crisis has lasted so long it has generated doubt,” said Ludovic Subran, chief economist at Euler Hermes, a Paris-based credit insurer. “The French need to reassure themselves as well as convince others that they’re right in defending their welfare model and the state’s role in the economy.”

  The forum in Paris funded by French companies is aimed at showcasing the strengths of the European region’s second-largest economy. With slogans including “Participate in the New French Revolution,” the event seeks to boost the nation’s image after three years of weak growth.

  LAZY OR CLEVER

  Finance Minister Emmanuel Macron opened the conference, saying: “we have solid infrastructure, well trained young workers, a growing population and we have a social model that can also be a strength. The risk is that we sit back on this and believe that we don’t have to change, that we think that things have always been this way and therefore we can go on like this for another 10 years. I believe this is the profound mistake.”

  Executives, government officials and academics are debating topics such as “Are the French lazy or clever?” while companies are showing off innovations, including Airbus’s electric plane.

  “I don’t think the French are lazy,” Air France-KLM Alexandre de Juniac said. “But are we clever? The problem is that sometimes the French think they are cleverer than others. It’s a very serious mistake — it’s arrogant.”

  Symbolically, the conference is being held at the Grand Palais museum along the Seine River, an iron-and-glass structure built for the universal exhibition held in Paris in 1900.

  FEEL-GOOD EVENT

  France desperately needs some feel-good events.

  The country’s unemployment rate rose to 10.4 percent in the third quarter, the national statistics institute Insee said today. More than 3.4 million people in the country are out of work, the most ever.

  Inequality is worsening with a report published last month by the national statistics office Insee showing that the wages of the 10 percent of least-paid employees have declined by 0.2 percent a year since 2007. Also, tax increases to fund benefits last year shaved households’ average income by 0.6 percent.

  A survey of managers of medium-sized companies in Europe’s four largest economies published last month by GE Capital shows that executives of French companies are the most pessimistic on the outlook for their country. Even in Italy, whose economy is in worse shape, managers are more optimistic.

  A broader Pew survey released in September showed that the French were the biggest pessimists in Europe after the Greeks.

  ‘POSITIVE MOBILIZATION’

  The country’s economic slump has made it vulnerable and has made Hollande the least popular president in more than half a century. It has also spawned a slew of articles in the international media on France’s decline. Street’s comment that France was “finished” provoked a pained yelp in France.

  “The famous French bashing, gloom as an art of denigration, must stop,” said French deputy minister for parliamentary relations Jean-Marie Le Guen during a France Info radio interview this week. “Positive mobilization is needed.”

  In the days following Street’s remarks, Jean Tirole of the University of Toulouse won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. That was a week after French novelist Patrick Modiano landed the literature prize.

  French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted “One in the eye for French bashers.”

  VULNERABLE FRANCE

  For all its angst over French bashing, the government has yet to deliver on pledges to implement reforms demanded by business lobbies for simplifying business rules.

  This week, owners of small and medium-sized businesses took to the streets to complain about what they said were the difficulties of operating in France, including high social charges and taxes.

  “French bashing mostly targets France’s wealth redistribution system through taxes,” said Lionel Fontagne, an economy professor at the Pantheon-Sorbonne university in Paris. “It’s the combination of that policy choice with the economic difficulties which most European countries are confronted to which makes France vulnerable to attacks.”
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