Forget Paris: Stymied by Socialist Policies, the French Start to Quit France
By Vivienne Walt / Paris
TIME MAGAZINE
May 21, 2013
Ernest Hemingway once described Paris in spring as a time when âthere were no problems except where to be happiest.â Clearly Hemingway did not foresee the springtime of 2013. For many of Parisâ residents right now â in fact, for many French in general â the answer to the question of where to be happiest is: pretty much anywhere but France. For months now, there has been a steady rumbling of people packing up and moving out. There are few reliable figures of the numbers of people leaving, in part because many are moving within the E.U., where there are no immigration requirements for Europeans. Yet for those of us living in France, the exodus has been notable. Around New Year, a moving truck rolled up to our building and loaded the worldly possessions of the couple and four children living below us as they headed off to Singapore where better prospects awaited the father of the family.
Charles-Marie Jottras, president of Parisâs biggest luxury-real-estate company Daniel Feau, says the departure of wealthy clients is reminiscent of the early 1980s, when the previous Socialist President François Mitterrand was in power. The difference this time, he says, is that âit used to be just rich people who left, not business people.â He believes Hollandeâs government now realizes that its policies might be driving out the very people he needs to help grow Franceâs economy. It is a feeling, says Pierre Reboul, founder of Electronic Business Group, a Paris-based networking company, that âthere is just no support for people who are enterprising.â LâExpress and Le Figaro featured the same cover headline: âWhy they are leaving France.â LâExpress added the subtitle: âItâs not just the rich!â as though the editors were amazed that regular folk would opt to try their luck elsewhere and forgo cherished French benefits like minimum five weeksâ annual paid leave, decent public health care and free schooling. The magazines cite the 300,000 French estimated to be living in London and the 200,000 French residents in Belgium â a 25% rise since 2010, according to Le Figaro.
If thereâs anyone who still needs convincing that France is in a dyspeptic funk, a flurry of statistics last week showed just how serious the situation is. The statistics suggested that the problem might not be due only to Europeâs economic crisis, as Hollande argued during his press conference on May 16.
On May 14, Pew Research published a poll saying that âno European country is becoming more dispirited and disillusioned faster than France,â with 91% of those surveyed by the organization saying that the economy was doing badly and 67% ranking Hollande as doing âa lousy job.â The next day, May 15, Franceâs official statistics agency INSEE announced that the country had entered its third recession in four years, with unemployment rising more than 11% since Hollande came to power.
http://world.time.com/2013/05/21/fo...he-french-start-to-quit-france/#ixzz2U1klkHoy
This is how you destroy a country.
By Vivienne Walt / Paris
TIME MAGAZINE
May 21, 2013
Ernest Hemingway once described Paris in spring as a time when âthere were no problems except where to be happiest.â Clearly Hemingway did not foresee the springtime of 2013. For many of Parisâ residents right now â in fact, for many French in general â the answer to the question of where to be happiest is: pretty much anywhere but France. For months now, there has been a steady rumbling of people packing up and moving out. There are few reliable figures of the numbers of people leaving, in part because many are moving within the E.U., where there are no immigration requirements for Europeans. Yet for those of us living in France, the exodus has been notable. Around New Year, a moving truck rolled up to our building and loaded the worldly possessions of the couple and four children living below us as they headed off to Singapore where better prospects awaited the father of the family.
Charles-Marie Jottras, president of Parisâs biggest luxury-real-estate company Daniel Feau, says the departure of wealthy clients is reminiscent of the early 1980s, when the previous Socialist President François Mitterrand was in power. The difference this time, he says, is that âit used to be just rich people who left, not business people.â He believes Hollandeâs government now realizes that its policies might be driving out the very people he needs to help grow Franceâs economy. It is a feeling, says Pierre Reboul, founder of Electronic Business Group, a Paris-based networking company, that âthere is just no support for people who are enterprising.â LâExpress and Le Figaro featured the same cover headline: âWhy they are leaving France.â LâExpress added the subtitle: âItâs not just the rich!â as though the editors were amazed that regular folk would opt to try their luck elsewhere and forgo cherished French benefits like minimum five weeksâ annual paid leave, decent public health care and free schooling. The magazines cite the 300,000 French estimated to be living in London and the 200,000 French residents in Belgium â a 25% rise since 2010, according to Le Figaro.
If thereâs anyone who still needs convincing that France is in a dyspeptic funk, a flurry of statistics last week showed just how serious the situation is. The statistics suggested that the problem might not be due only to Europeâs economic crisis, as Hollande argued during his press conference on May 16.
On May 14, Pew Research published a poll saying that âno European country is becoming more dispirited and disillusioned faster than France,â with 91% of those surveyed by the organization saying that the economy was doing badly and 67% ranking Hollande as doing âa lousy job.â The next day, May 15, Franceâs official statistics agency INSEE announced that the country had entered its third recession in four years, with unemployment rising more than 11% since Hollande came to power.
http://world.time.com/2013/05/21/fo...he-french-start-to-quit-france/#ixzz2U1klkHoy
This is how you destroy a country.
