Several big French bosses have recently sounded the alarm about what the loss of national competitiveness owes to bureaucracy – by which we mean the piling up of standards deemed to serve the general interest, the complexity of administrative procedures and the obsession with controls. Let’s continue in the same vein.
1) The question of competitiveness is not a subject for dinners in town or for business school entrance exams. It’s about survival. Given the state of our public finances and the exponential cost of our debt, immense economic and social tragedies await us if we fail to produce, sell, boost employment, provoke investment, generate confidence and, at the strictest minimum, do not do it less or more poorly than the others.
2) Donald Trump will make things more difficult for us. His economic program is fundamentally deregulatory. Across the Atlantic, the legal constraints weighing on businesses will melt like snow in the sun. And, in case everyone has not fully understood that America will be all the greater the more attractive it is, the president-elect took care to add a cherry on the cake by announcing on Truth Social that “any person or company investing $1 billion or more in the United States will receive approvals and permits on an expedited basis, including environmental approvals. Get ready to rock!!!” And we, to keep the friend’s bag….
3) We use most of our genius to machine-gun our knees. The political instability – and immaturity – in which we indulge offers France flamboyant economic suicide. It is not clear who, among companies, could quietly give their confidence to this Parliament to produce the minimum of legal certainty essential to their oxygenation. The crazy atmosphere in the Assembly does not only have the effect of prohibiting the slightest legitimate anticipation. It imposes anxiety as the only rational course of action – without even talking about taxation. Large groups are relocating, getting listed in pieces on the stock exchanges of other countries. Others are weakened enough to arouse appetites for devouring. Chance has nothing to do with it.
4) The European Union is hardly any better in the art of exposing its herbivorous throat to the teeth of predators. Her anti-nuclear determination has long provided a good example of this, but today it is in virtuous one-upmanship that she excels with the most incredible naivety. The entry into force, in two years, of the directive – of French inspiration – on the “duty of vigilance” of large companies deserves the attribution of the pompom in this regard. It will impose on them, in their relations abroad with their suppliers, subcontractors or subsidiaries, a number of social and environmental obligations that are terribly difficult to satisfy, which will have the effect of throwing them raw into the paws of the most vulnerable NGOs. vindictive, who will try to roast them in court. Not having to endure anything like this, Europe’s competitors (United States, China, etc.) are already licking their lips about it.
For those who want to face these realities, doubt is no longer permitted. We will obviously have to cut the fat from standards and procedures, as surely as we will have to do the same in public spending. I have already had the opportunity to say here that, in this necessary surgery, the choice of the sites to operate as well as that of the depth of the excisions constituted an issue of civilization and that it was necessary to put as much energy into this as possible. of shared political discernment.
Obviously, we are completely incapable of doing this at the moment. However, this is the only worthwhile path: grab the pruning shears before others grab the chainsaw; prune short, but clean as well as judicious; see that the tree is in very bad shape, that the prevailing winds will shake it a lot and that it will fall completely if we do not take care of it now.
.