France and economic policy

“It has the world’s largest government relative to the size of the economy. Government spending to GDP exceeds 58%, the highest in the world.

Unions are exceedingly powerful. Their ability to organize paralyzing strikes gives them a level of economic power that far exceeds their actual representation. France’s state is so large that the public sector employs 5.3 million people (21.1% of the active population), a ratio of civil servants to inhabitants of 70.9/1,000, according to Eurostat.

France has one of the highest taxation systems in the OECD. In France, income tax and employer social security contributions combine to account for 82% of the total tax wedge, according to the OECD. Corporate tax rates in France are also extremely high, at 26.5%, with companies with profits of more than €500,000 paying a rate of 27.5%.

The labor market regulations in France are so restrictive that the number of companies with forty-nine employees is 2.4 times higher than those with fifty, primarily due to the significant burdens businesses face once they reach the fifty-employee threshold. According to Bloomberg, a 50-employee company must create “three worker councils, introduce profit sharing, and submit restructuring plans to the councils if the company decides to fire workers for economic reasons”. — Daniel Lacalle