By the way, what limits France from regulating whatever they want? My impression, is that it France is regulation city. Granted, the Germans are worse.
"By the way, what limits France from regulating whatever they want? My impression, is that it France is regulation city. Granted, the Germans are worse."
What limits it?
Only the willingness of the people to tolerate it and to continue to re-elect the politicians who make the regulations. If a regulation is unpopular, it will provoke a general strike and be removed. The French government is usually very careful to not pass legislation that it senses will provoke an angry public backlash, because that means a strike, and a strike means a humiliating backdown for the government.
But when a frank con like Chirac, who honestly is completely incompetent, is at the wheel of the ship of state, it keeps crashing upon the rocks. Honestly he just cannot help it. He is only President because of a voting anomaly that made Jean-Marie Le Pen his opponent. People voted for the corrupt fool in preference to the racist, but it was hardly a choice.
French business is certainly over-regulated.
Especially the labor market.
And this presents a terrible challenge for French competitivity. There is no question about it.
However, the ticklish business of using creeping regulation to start intruding on personal rights. This is a particularly American and British problem, probably because of the cultural trait of Anglo-Saxons to always obey the law. French people obey the law, but when politicans and government figures begin to use the law to try and assault liberties or privileges the French care about, French people are very quick to take to the streets and to defy the law and the authorities. You can't "creep up" on the French like this, because when a lot of people don't like what is done, they simply go on strike and disobey it, and the government has to stop doing it.
In the Anglo-Saxon countries there is not this ingrained tradition of quick recourse to civil disobedience and strikes as a powerful public pushback. Everyone knows that French politicians are arrogant, insufferable and unresponsive. And therefore, everyone knows that when they step over the line and pass a ridiculous and self-serving law, the response is to simply shove it back, say no, refuse to obey it, and force them to take it back.
In America or England, the lack of a tradition of public irascibility would make such a response more dangerous and unpredictable. In France, 7 million people can stop obeying a law, go out on strike for a week, and the government quickly retract. But in the United States, if 7 million people stopped obeying a law and went out into the street, it would be very unusual, and not obeying A law would very probably turn into a more general not obeying THE law. It would not be a strike but a riot, and things would become violent. These differences are cultural. Obviously if French government were wonderful, or even marginally responsive, there would not be so many repetitive strikes. The government ministers are as difficult and stubborn as everyone else in the country, however, so the only way to temper the one is with te temper of the other. Just so long as nobody gets killed. And nobody does.
Germany is indeed worse, much worse. For German authorities, not unlike the British, have the same insufferable condescending arrogance of high French bureaucrats. But Germans, even moreso than the English, believe that they must obey every single law, and make sure everybody else obeys every single law, no matter how stupid or overbearing. There is a famous pamphlet from Prussia issued by Frederich the Great which directs housewives all across Germany what time they are required by law to arise, what chores they must do, in what order, how they must bake their bread, the recipes they must use, etc. This is as ingrained in the German character, this reflexive obedience, as the strike is in the French character.
The result is that there are two countries, side by side, with impossible bureaucrats. One, France, has a safety valve: the people do not terribly respect their government and when government starts doing things ridiculous, they shove back, shut everything down, and don't obey the law. The government then is forced to retract it and sanity prevails. The Germans look down on this as lawlessness, and therefore, no petty regulation of any bureaucrat, however overbearing, is ever pushed back. Any individual who pushes back is pounced upon his neighbors, never mind the authorities! And so all of those laws and rules and regulations clutter, and remain, and are followed. If you drive through a German village late at night, you will see Germans quite drunk standing quietly on an empty dark and deserted streetcorner, waiting for the light to change so that they can cross the street. You will not ever see this in France.
Of course in Italy, the cars don't respect the traffic lights at noon. But the Italians take the French penchant for selective disobedience to a whole new level and make it a general national artform. For a land without any discernible laws, Italy is very pretty and well to do place. But it is foolish to drive there.