Many of them have bent over the bedside of France, in search of neuroses and pathologies specific to our nation. Alain Peyrefitte has detected a “French evil” fueled by centralism and bureaucracy, Jacques Julliard a “French misfortune” fueled by our schizophrenia… Essayist and columnist for the Express, Nicolas Bouzou dares a new diagnosis: we suffer from the syndrome of ‘”roughly”. In many areas, French performances are not catastrophic, but they are very far from excellence. Our country is not collapsing, contrary to what decline practitioners claim, but it is not recovering either. We are “living” assures Doctor Bouzou, while the challenges promise to be immense: climate transition, aging of the population, debt, military rearmament required by a new geopolitical context…
No need to look for scapegoats on the side of the political class: the “almost” is a general state of mind, a collective mediocrity. Take the economy. With an unemployment rate at its lowest for ten years, the results are not bad. As a good liberal, Nicolas Bouzou sees in it the fruits of the flexibilization of the labor market and the reduction in charges. Significant unemployment remains for people without qualifications or seniors, even though more and more companies are facing recruitment difficulties.
Our country remains a large market, with good infrastructure. But abroad, he suffers from an image of social conflict and a moderate taste for work. French exports now represent less than 13% of total exports from the euro zone (compared to almost 18% in 2000). The fault, according to Nicolas Bouzou, is still too heavy a tax, and above all a lack of innovation. Higher education is not up to standard, with an inability to retain our best researchers. The essayist thus pleads for a major Ministry of Innovation, which would include that of Research, with the mission of being a true anti-decline ministry.
This culture of approximation also reigns in our immigration policies. While France stands out for its low-skilled immigrants, Nicolas Bouzou invites us to encourage truly chosen immigration. In the short term, we need workers in sectors with recruitment difficulties (health, logistics). In the long term, we must attract foreign researchers and entrepreneurs in the artificial intelligence or biotechnology sectors. In the United States, more than a third of patents are filed by foreigners.
The return to excellence
Even “almost” in the energy sector. Between 2005 and 2019, France’s GDP grew by 18%, while our CO2 emissions fell by 22%. A record far from shameful. But strategic delays, such as the questionable management of EDF, have undermined the industrial flagship of nuclear energy, yet decarbonized. A messy doctrine that also affects renewable energies, with the proliferation of legal opposition to wind turbines.
Our health system shone by its performance as its egalitarian aspect? Even if France devotes more than 12% of its national income to it, it too is contaminated, as evidenced by the medical desertification or the long waits for certain specialties. In passing, Bouzou is ironic about those who describe a supposed neoliberalization of the hospital: “Here are public structures, run by civil servants, controlled by public agencies, which employ employees under statutes, and whose prices are set by the authorities. public”.
This essay is a call to reconnect with excellence, rather than being tempted by the easy solution: that of right and left populism. “To give in to populism is to go from ‘almost’ to the abyss without knowing how long it will take to get out of it,” warns Nicolas Bouzou, who cites Argentina, one of the most prosperous in the world at the start of the 20th century, and are no longer succumbing today to the sirens of Peronism. According to him, this return to excellence goes through the salary and symbolic revaluation of teachers, the fight against scientific relativism or the revival of a collective taste for work. From Kylian Mbappé to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Emmanuelle Charpentier, there is no shortage of representatives of French genius. Let’s follow them, with exactitude!
Nearly France, by Nicolas Bouzou. The Observatory, 158 p., €18.