Nostalgic and Narcissistic: France's Obsession with the Past Hinders Reforms

[sysop]

France is a deeply nostalgic and narcissistic country which is also, precisely for those reasons, very charming. The country would like to be part of Europe's north, but its heart belongs in the south. It will take more than navel-gazing to get the nation through the euro crisis unscathed.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...849817,00.html

[yiannaki]

Thanks for this excellent article. It did confince me of two things: We better do have two euros. And France better does have the south one.

[pmoseley]

The title of this article appeared to be all about how France is obsessed with itself, but ends up as an article that tries to portray France as a country obsessed with Germany. Why does Der Spiegel always publish articles that seem to be just pro-German propaganda. Whatever the topic, it seems that the German angle is always at the forefront of the writer's mind, however twisted. I realise that Der Spiegel is a German publication aimed primarily at German readers, but this approach really does boil down to bias, which is unfortunate for readers, particularly those who are not in the least bit Germano-centric. The recent article on the London Olympics, for example, even had a small section on how they were run 'with German efficiency' That was just clap trap. Come on, France is a mature democracy, with its own culture, attitudes and history. And like most other European countries, they don't necessarily like or compare themselves incessantly with the Germans and may not even want to either speak, behave or manage their economies like them. Der Spiegel - please grow up!

[Dodin]

Oedipus?

[ZeLuiz]

France resists reform as defined by others. This is the rational thing to do if you believe, as France has every reason to believe, that "reform" is going in the wrong direction. This is what most reputed economists all over the world have been saying for the last four years, with the exception of the Goldman Sachs-trained hacks currently in charge in the EU. It is also what an increasing amount of empirical evidence is confirming.

We should therefore ask ourselves if the real problem is France's resistance to "reform" or Germany's resistance to basic economic rationality.