France writes itself off as arrogant failure: New books see a country in decline

The Times ^ | September 26, 2003 | Charles Brumner

[Timesink]

September 26, 2003

France writes itself off as arrogant failure

by charles brumner

New books see a country in decline

FRANCE is a nation in decline, blind to its failings and living beyond its means while strutting with empty arrogance on the world stage.

That may sound like the standard Francophobe rant from across the Channel or the Atlantic but it is, surprisingly, a view gaining ground in France.

Doubts about Gallic supremacy have been a periodic feature of France for centuries. They have now returned, fed by economic gloom and amplified by bestselling books. France, according to the thesis, has been overtaken by Britain and others because it atrophied as a centralised welfare state in the 1970s.

Before leaving to lecture the United Nations on the superiority of the French world view this week, President Chirac was forced to respond to the doom-mongers with a morale-boosting speech. France was bursting with health, he insisted to a provincial au- dience. In Paris, the claim was given as much credence as his line that “France has no quarrel with the United States”.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, hammered home his boss’s message this week, saying: “I do not believe that France is in decline.”

The words of the now unloved Prime Minister were undermined yesterday when he unveiled a 2004 budget that expects minimal growth, takes national debt up to record level and busts a hole in the EU’s ceiling for public deficits for a third successive year.

Big corporate bankruptcies and spring strikes by the public sector and entertainment workers preceded a summer of forest fires and a heatwave that was officially blamed yesterday for 14,800 deaths.

The mood is being fanned by three books which argue that there is nothing temporary about France’s troubles. With its chronic unemployment and dinosaur centralised state, France can no longer pose as a universal model of progress and civilisation, they argue. In L’Arrogance Française, Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, both journalists, say that France infuriates the rest of the world with its discredited diplomacy.

In Adieu à la France qui s’en va (Farewell to a France that is departing) Jean-Marie Rouart, a novelist and member of the august Académie Française, says that France is losing its soul to mediocrity and needs a great leader to restore its grandeur. The biggest splash is being made by La France Qui Tombe (Collapsing France) by Nicolas Baverez, an historian and economist.

Baverez says that, after three postwar decades of progress, France lost its way under the fourteen-year left-wing reign of François Mitterrand and eight years under M Chirac. Hostages to tyrannical state sector unions, farmers, subsidised film-makers and other interest groups, successive governments have squandered national wealth and heritage to maintain a protectionist, Soviet-style state, he says.

He also draws unfavourable comparisons with Britain, the favourite destination for French emigrants in the past decade. British per capita income has overtaken that of France, where taxes are now much higher. Britons pay 45 per cent of their income to the state in taxes, compared with 75 per cent for the French. Baverez says that Britain has taken over the European Union, monopolising its top jobs and imposing a British stamp on the new draft constitution. France, in turn, has alienated its neighbours by playing fast and loose with the EU rules.

Abroad, M Chirac’s posturing had made a laughing stock of France. “In the Iraq crisis, France has suffered a diplomatic Agincourt,” he says.

France faces a choice, Baverez concludes: “Shock therapy that will modernise the country through a forced march” or the pursuit of decline that will produce social upheaval and feed the far Right of Jean-Marie Le Pen. France, he says, is ripe for a near-revolutionary change such as when it summoned Charles de Gaulle as its saviour in 1958.

The Left is accusing him of “declinism”, an old right-wing obsession that fed Fascism in the 1930s. Attacks are also coming from the Right. Figaro said: “This mood of ‘francopessimism’ is creating an unhealthy atmosphere which carries the stigma of the 1930s.” But, it added: “The roots of the evil are in our statist culture, something that the British threw out ages ago.”

The bulk of the reaction, holds that Baverez makes good points but neglects France’s qualities, such as the reforms that have opened markets, its place as Europe’s top recipient of foreign investment, and a quality of life that remains the envy of the world.

A powerful defence of the decline thesis came in Le Monde from Marc Fumaroli, an eminent historian and a professor at the University of Chicago, who said that France, for all its undoubted glories, was suffering from a general “irritation, frustration and demoralisation” that was more bitter and deep than anywhere else in Europe or in the US.

Deprived of a leader with the vision of Thatcher, Reagan or Blair, it had been left to stagnate, he said.

[razorback-bert]

I went outside my tinfoil posting room and you read my mind and posted it.

[americanbychoice]

It depends on what the breakdown of "taxes is".
For instance, in Germany, the social contributions by an employee are 46%. That includes social insurance, unemployment insurance, healthcare, ecology tax etc.
Then comes the income tax, 16% Vat, a consumtion tax on everything you purchase, Very high gas taxes, Utilities that are taxed very heavily, etc.
The 75% tax rate, when totaled may be very accurate. Income tax alone , no.

[jpl]

Don't you think that the way to prevent becoming like France of Sweden - if you don't want that - is to defeat that political party, rather than attacking France or Sweden? How is it their fault?

Sure, and I really don't blame them as much as I blame our liberals. As far as I'm concerned the French can run their country any way they see fit. I have to say though that I can do without their lectures about how morally superior they are to us, especially considering that we've been more than a little helpful to them over the years.

[Mr. Silverback]

I thought 75% was the maximum rate of taxation in France.

I think you're right about that. Also, IIRC, even Michael Moore thinks a 75% top rate is too high for Americans.

[Mr. Silverback]

It's gotten so bad that there's heavy fighting going on in downtown Paris as we speak. Go here and vote USA.

[Mr. Silverback]

One other thing I noticed in the article, was that there wasn't one comment about the growing French Muslim population, which is increasingly resisting assimilation.

Excellent point, and the worst part is that so few Frenchmen see it at all. If Muslims traipsed into Arlington and vandalized graves, the main (and unwarranted) concern would be that a million rednecks would get their shotguns and start lynching any Muslim they could find. It happened in France, and the main concern was that the British tourists would stay home.

[Mr. Silverback]

Grampa Dave, I respect you greatly, but to your boycott idea I must say
HECK NO!!

I don't care who owns the bloody company, if a product is made in the U.S., boycotting it hurts the U.S. worker first and foremost! Only boycott if it says "Product of France" on it, folks!

[Billthedrill]

I honestly do not believe that bilateral relationships with the United States are the critical challenge to French foreign policy - that challenge is France's place in the nascent European Union and the effect membership will have on policies that heretofore have been regarded as purely internal. The budget deficit, for example, is outside EU stated parameters for a third straight year - what happens when that is no longer cheerily disregarded? Many Americans consider the French difficult to get along with, (is that an understatement or what?) but then we don't really have to get along with them at all. The other EU members do. If there is an undercurrent of assumption in the French media that the EU is simply going to be France writ large, I think they are in for a surprise.

From where I sit (half a globe away) it would appear that the first big issue is shaping up to be agricultural policy - this promises to be knotty because the current strongly protectionist policy is held in place by a coalition of conservative (in the original sense of the word) farmers' union planks and a liberal Green plank that is on a crusade against genetically modified crops. It is a rather difficult combination for any government to buck.

[BlackRazor]

I don't care who owns the bloody company, if a product is made in the U.S., boycotting it hurts the U.S. worker first and foremost! Only boycott if it says "Product of France" on it, folks!

I agree with Mr. Silverback. It's hard to make an informed decision about boycotting without knowing how many Americans are employed by all these companies. Perhaps you could supplement your list with that information?

[malakhi]

France is not in decline!

[malakhi]

France is Europe's California

An excellent analogy.

[malakhi]

"Jean-Marie Rouart, a novelist and member of the august Académie Française, says that France is losing its soul to mediocrity and needs a great leader to restore its grandeur."

Oh yes. That solution has worked out so well in Europe in the past couple centuries, hasn't it?

[Timesink]

Where did you get the figure from?

It's in the article I posted.

[AFreeBird]

US Filter (funny name for a french company) took over administering our local water company after the city of Indianapolis bought it (the water co.) from NISOURCE. Kinda hard to boycott the water that comes out of the tap.

[Grampa Dave]

Short sighted, but that is your privilege.

I refuse to buy any product made in America by a company that is owned by the French.

Do you work for one of these companies?

[Grampa Dave]

Ask the city council why they awarded a contract like this one?

They can't be the only water quality managers around?

[Jorge]

France is Europe's California, where decades of rampant liberalism and vote-buying have placed the nation on an economic collision course with reality.

Scarey but true. Let's hope ousting Davis signals a turn around.

[gathersnomoss]

Never stop teaching your children the facts that the schools fail to teach.

[Grampa Dave]

This water purification/filtering control by the Frogs is really scary. Most of it is under the Culligan/Everpure umbrella.

http://bourse.lerevenu.com/newsdepeches.hts%3FurlAction%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fbourse.lerevenu.com%252Fnewsdepeches.hts&idnews%3DAFW030924_08294000&numligne%3D0&date%3D030924

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VE: perte nette p/g 1S03 de 2,1 mds EUR contre bénéfice 1S02 de 213 M EUR
AFP - 24/09/03 08:29

PARIS, 24 sept (AFP)
Le groupe français de services Veolia Environnement (eau, propreté, énergie et transports) a accusé une perte nette part du groupe de 2,1 milliards d'euros au premier semestre 2003, contre un bénéfice net de 213 millions d'euros un an plus tôt, a-t-il annoncé mercredi dans un communiqué.
Cette perte résulte "essentiellement" de la dépréciation exceptionnelle des actifs de sa filiale américaine US Filter, à hauteur de 2,232 mds EUR, a précisé VE.
Le groupe a également fait état d'un "recentrage stratégique" dans l'activité Eau aux Etats-Unis, passant notamment par une concentration sur les activités régies par des contrats d'exploitation à long terme pour les clients municipaux et industriels ainsi que par la décision de céder les activités de services aux particuliers et au secteur commercial (Culligan et Everpure).
Hors éléments exceptionnels, le bénéfice net du groupe a chuté de 38,7% au premier semestre 2003, s'établissant à 132,6 M EUR contre 216,2 M EUR sur les six premiers mois de 2002, soit un montant inférieur aux attentes des analystes.
L'excédent brut d'exploitation (EBITDA) consolidé a reculé quant à lui de 6,5% à 1,824 md EUR, contre 1,951 md EUR sur la même période de l'exercice précédent, selon le communiqué.
Début août, VE (ex-Vivendi Environnement) avait annoncé une baisse de 6,2% de son chiffre d'affaires du premier semestre à 14,048 milliards d'euros, contre 14,971 mds EUR un an plus tôt.
Le groupe s'est déclaré mercredi "conforté dans son objectif de croissance à moyen terme de ses activités compris entre 4 et 8% par an", ajoutant que la rentabilité des capitaux employés devrait se situer entre 8 et 9% après impôts, dès 2005.


© 2003 AFP