EDF, the French electricity utility, is connecting this week the Flamanville EPR nuclear reactor to the grid. That good news, yet, is accompanied by the usual negative comments regarding the exceptional length of the works (a 12 years delay) and the construction huge cost overruns (10 billion). If these points are undisputable, they must not mask another very positive reality for France which so has reestablished its capacity to build nuclear power plants. This one had been seriously affected by several major strategic mistakes.

There was first the refusal, at the end of the Nineties, by the successive governments to ...

Continue reading

The Barnier government fall after the likely vote of a motion of censure regarding the Social Security financing law is the consequence of the contradictions between the economic policy choices adopted for ten years and the necessity to contain the evolution of the French public debt. But the alarming words employed these last two weeks are immoderate: the comparison with Greece doesn’t make any sense due to the different sizes of the two countries and these about Germany are groundless because the country is going to be confronted with heavy economic difficulties and a real political instability caused by ...

Continue reading

The reports and the comments are plentiful after France poor economic results. The followed trend for twenty years is worrying due to a continuous and significant downgrade of the main economic indicators. After two decades shown by growth, an inflation reduction, the necessary industrial restructurings along with some mastery regarding public finances (the public debt in 2002 reached only 60% of the GDP) which had allowed France to come in the euro zone, the situation has not stopped to deteriorate: trade deficit and record public indebtedness, low growth and unemployment staying at a high level and a worrying de-industrialization. All ...

Continue reading