Public spending: is France “the country of collective irresponsibility”?
This is the major topic addressed by numerous articles in the international press on the crisis in France: when it comes to public spending, are the French a "bunch of irresponsible gamblers"? Or are they demonstrating healthy resistance to the dogma of austerity? Opinions differ.
The French political world is torn apart over the issue. Another prime minister has just fallen. And the standoff is far from over: is austerity the only remedy for the derailments of France's public finances? Are the French fundamentally irresponsible for not wanting to save money? The foreign press is crossing swords.
YES They are irresponsible spenders“Welcome to the land of collective irresponsibility” : the words could not be clearer, the opinion more decisive than in Der Spiegel , in Hamburg. The major German liberal magazine is exasperated by a French political class that sent Prime Minister François Bayrou packing on September 8, under the pretext that he wanted to impose savings.
“France cannot save. It does not want to. But, above all, it does not want to raise taxes to solve its growing debt problem,” the journalist chokes out, alarmed by the apparent consensus in France, where no one feels responsible for the state of the debt (114% of GDP). Rather, he observes, there is in the country “a form of self-abandonment.” “If financial bankruptcy is not yet here, this is not the case for moral bankruptcy. […] Better the crisis of the State than the economies, the revolt p
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