France Could Be Next European Economic Disaster
A failed plan to tax the rich at 75 percent. A glaring lack of global competitiveness. Famous actors trading in their French citizenship for Russian to avoid paying high tax rates. The news from Paris as of late has been a bit sensational, but also dire. Could France be the first northern country in the European Union to confront potential economic demise in 2013? Perhaps that assessment is not unlike Gerard Depardieu’s highly publicized Moscow defection—a bit dramatic. But according to recent economic figures, there is some cause for concern.
The French economy—Europe’s second largest—grew at just 0.1 percent in 2012, and unemployment remains at a 14-year high of nearly 11 percent. High labor and production costs have all but crushed competitiveness with European and Asian exporters in the global market, and the French continue to resist making the kinds of deep economic reforms that helped countries like Germany get back on track in the 1980s.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the European debt crisis.]
Walking the streets of Paris during the recent holiday season, few French nationals were to be found along the boulevards of les grands magasins. Rather, Chinese, Russians and Brazilians filled the streets admiring the holiday windows, which in many ways were a reflection of their own images.
“France has essentially become a luxury economy catering primarily to foreigners,” one Parisian told me. “We don’t create anything outside of fashion, foods and touristic experiences.”
[Read the U.S. News Debate: Who Is Handling Its Debt Crisis Better: United States or Europe?]
But observers note that this model is unsustainable for the country of 65 million. As Fortune’s Shawn Tully writes this week, “La crise est arrive.” Even The New York Times ran an editorial Sunday decrying the sad state of the French economy and offered up a number of potential remedies.
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