France’s decline is a French invention. Obviously, there are things than have gone badly in France. But “le déclin” is a purely intellectual invention. Except for Bernard-Henri Lévy who wears only white shirts with no tie as a mark of distinction, French “maîtres à penser” always dress in dark suits. They are pessimistic. You cannot be an optimist and an intellectual! Crisis sells books. Happy endings only occur in American films, disdained as commercial. If you are a person with a positive approach to life, you can become a politician, a car salesman or an actor. Not a philosopher.

So they start to talk of decline. And now about 70% of the French population believes it. Their point is that France is not as powerful, rich, influential and respected as it once was. Any person who has ever met a French citizen has a clear impression of the strength of their national pride – how highly they view France’s place in history, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution (liberté, egalité…fraternité is still coming), French cinema and modern art, all French contributions to world progress. As heirs to such creativity, it is not surprising they get depressed.

There are always reasons credited for such decline: the English language has become common in Brussels’ European bureaucracy, China’s GDP is growing rapidly, the population of Germany has outgrown the French and New York is the world art capital, etc.

Seriously speaking, the next French president has his/her work cut out: unemployment does not fall below 8%, national debt mounts, growth is slow even by European standards, the standard of living is extremely expensive, security in hostile neighbourhoods is very poor, integration of second generation immigrants hasn’t been successful and political life is sclerotic.

Nicolas Sarkozy, mocked as an American neocon, proposes tax cuts, a law stipulating that an unemployed person cannot refuse more than two job offers, and opposes replacing one of every two retiring civil servants. Ségolène Royal, mocked as France’s Tony Blair, promises to increase the minimum salary to 1,500 euros/month, create 500,000 jobs for young people and 120,000 social houses annually.

Sarkozy and Royal will not dare touch the 35-hour working week, according to many economists one of the worse possible recipes that would further damage weak French productivity and competitiveness. By the way, how many hours a week do you work? French people: 35. Plus five weeks annual vacation! Then, they take one of their marvellous high speed trains and go to Provence to feel “la joie de vivre!” Meanwhile, we somehow continue to talk about decline.