Good luck with Le Basket Case French economy, Monsieur Macron!

Oh, how the European political establishment is crowing over the victory of Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential election.

The youthful socialist former banker is widely seen as the ideal figure to rebuild his ailing country and to reinvigorate the crisis-ridden EU.

with his globalist values, rhetoric of economic reform and belief in ever- greater federal integration under Brussels, he is the antithesis of the nationalist wave that has swept the west of late.

And, of course, what makes Macron’s triumph all the more appealing to the Eurocracy and its supporters is his uncompromising stance on Brexit. here is the new champion of the European project against perfidious Albion.

Zeal

Bristling with federalist zeal, Macron recently described Britain’s decision to leave as ‘a serious mistake’ and ‘a crime’ which has left us ‘ facing servitude rather than taking back control’. he now denies that he wants to hurt our country, but too often his language points in that direction.

he has argued there should be restrictions on Britain selling financial services in the Eurozone ‘ as a matter of sovereignty’, and made it clear that luring bankers from the City to Paris is a priority. one of his first acts yesterday was to threaten an end to the Le Touquet agreement, by which UK border checks take place at the French Channel ferry ports, giving us more control over who enters the country.

But before he gets carried away with what the future holds for Britain, the new President should consider putting his own house in order. For, as he ensconces himself in the Elysee Palace, his biggest problem by far is the woeful state of the French economy.

France today is a basket case. It is under siege, weighed down by mass unemployment, a bloated public sector, an unaffordable welfare system, and a hopelessly outdated, inflexible labour market paralysed by powerful unions.

It is hard to know where to begin. For one thing, Macron cannot hope to help France to prosper once more unless he can end the destructive anticompetitive business culture that punishes enterprise and job creation. he will have his work cut out if he tries.

Because for all his optimistic talk yesterday about ‘the turn of a new page’, stagnation looks the more likely outcome. huge vested interests, led by public sector unions and civil service bureaucrats, will fight any change that threatens their privileges. Yesterday, barely hours after Macron’s election, there were protests in Paris at the very idea of workplace liberalisation.

Moreover, Macron’s faith in the EU is grossly misplaced. The Brussels regime does not represent economic salvation, as he insists. It is the sure route to further decline, since tighter monetary and fiscal union — just what Macron advocates — will make France even more subservient to Germany. In effect, his policy is for France to lose its last vestiges of control over interest rates, expenditure and taxation.

For all his youth and energy, telegenic qualities and the supposed new ideas of his party, En Marche, Macron represents the past’s failed policies. what France is crying out for is a truly radical approach and immediate action.

My wife and I are lucky enough to have a second home in North-west France and we travel there regularly. The air of depression is palpable in the nearby towns, where shops are boarded up and businesses struggling. Costs of basic services, such as a visit from a plumber or electrician, are inflated by huge added taxes, while start-ups are hindered by a choking bureaucracy.

That encapsulates the dismal story of the French economy. This is a country, lest we forget, that has so many advantages: it has a strong industrial base, home to global giants including Airbus and EDF energy. It is a pioneer in nuclear power, rail transport, insurance and fashion.

Its education system is more rigorous than Britain’s, and it has the highest proportion of science graduates in Europe. Its self- employed traders — bakers, restaurateurs and cafe owners — are hard-working. And it’s the most popular tourist destination in the world.

But France is held back by an economic structure that is hopelessly unsuited for the 21st century. Joblessness, at just under 10 per cent, is more than double that in Britain, and youth unemployment is around 24 per cent.

It is no wonder that the dole queues are so long, given that employers face so many regulatory obstacles when taking on staff. It is also extremely difficult to sack any permanent employee, no matter how incompetent, while the rigid 35-hour maximum working week — a sacred feature of the French corporate workplace — weakens competitiveness.

Crippling

In addition, companies face colossal financial burdens from the government, including an average corporation tax rate of 33 per cent — compared to Britain’s of just 21 per cent — and payroll taxes that weigh in at a crippling 43 per cent of salaries, a far higher rate than any other western country.

All this money is needed to feed a state machine that gobbles up 57 per cent of French GDP. Almost one quarter of the entire French workforce is employed in the cosseted public sector, where the rights of staff come before the needs of taxpayers.

Mismanagement and absenteeism are rife. A 2014 survey found that, on top of holidays, French state employees take nearly a month off each year, on average.

The French civil service is a law unto itself. Its spendthrift extravagance was exposed in 2010 in a book by ‘whistleblower’ Zoe Shepard, an administrator in the Aquitaine Regional Council, which laid bare the absurdities of officialdom. ‘I was given a five- day assignment to change the font on a document,’ she revealed, writing of ‘never-ending aimless meetings’ and that the ‘waste was really shocking’.

Broken

Just as big a drain is the lavish French welfare system, among the most generous in the world, which swallows around £ 450 billion a year. Fraud is thought to account for more than £22 billion. on average, unemployment benefits pay 65 per cent of what the worker had previously been earning — another reason unemployment is so high, since there is a limited financial incentive to find work.

As yesterday’s disturbances in Paris demonstrate, reforming this broken system will be as tough a task as anything Mrs Thatcher achieved in the early Eighties.

The legacy of the French revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries is that a large element of the Left is profoundly reactionary, squealing at any attempt to modernise the economy.

The brute, mulish stubbornness of the unions was graphically embodied in october 2015 when Air France executive Xavier Broseta fled a staff meeting after his shirt was ripped from his body by workers angry at the company’s proposed redundancy programme.

Macron might sneer about Brexit, but Britain managed the transition to a modern economy sooner and far more successfully than France, where resistance to change has led only to decline.

Every French leader for the past 30 years has come to power, like Macron, preaching the language of reform, only to achieve little in office. will he be different? one can only hope so — and wish the new President bonne chance avec le basket case that is France.