Chien Méchant

As I noticed on my last visit to France, you don't meet many Eastern Europeans here. Okay, there are a few Russians but they seem to keep themselves to themselves in well protected villas with chien méchant notices on the gates ...

Of course this is due to France's decision not to allow the recent waves of countries joining the EU access to its labour market. It does mean that you meet French people in every restaurant and shop you visit - in marked contrast to Ireland. You would also expect it to mean that France has a low unemployment rate (if that was the intention of their decision) but it doesn't. The latest Eurostat data shows France having the fourth highest unemployment rate of the EU 27 countries, as shown in the chart. Incredibly, youth unemployment (under 25s) is also very high in France (18.1%) despite the availability of the kind of low skilled, entry level jobs 'exclusively' for French people.

Ireland and the UK chose a different path - allowing the first wave of Eastern European entrants free access to our labour markets. Though the jury is still out on whether there has been a net benefit to the host countries (and will be for at least another turn through the business cycle I reckon) we do not seem to have suffered the high youth unemployment in particular that the French obviously feared. Nor are we likely to: I'm with Brendan Keenan in today's Irish Independent when he suggests that even if Irish unemployment goes as high as 8% in the next year or two we'll still have fared much better than expected given the scale of the global economy's problems.

Still, I can't help noticing that France's unemployment rate is going in the right direction (down from 8.6% in March 2007 to 7.8% in March 2008), whilst our's is going in the wrong direction: from 4.6% to 5.6% over the same period. There's no Irish demand for the economic equivalent of the chien méchant just yet vis-a-vis immigrants: but don't be surprised if it nevertheless surfaces as a major issue in the next general election as we get closer to a French level of unemployment.

Nuclear Holidays

Every year hundreds of thousands of Irish people holiday in France, as I am this week. And every year we experience the deep down dread in our Irish eco-souls as we lie awake in our gites wondering if the nuclear power station next door will explode. Actually, I made that last bit up. Let's face it, 99.9% of Irish holiday makers in France don't give a second thought to French nuclear power, blissfully ignorant of the risks they are taking. Myself, I'm here in Antibes, well within the fallout zone from not one but four nuclear power stations at Tricastin in idyllic Provence. Strange how you get used to things ...

Back in Ireland we are embarking on an 'energy first' of our own: ramping up the share of renewable energy (i.e.: wind, for all practical purposes) beyond anything tried anywhere else in the world. As the ESRI noted in a recent paper on the Government's energy and climate policies, the current target requires that wind delivers 20-25% of all our electricity generation by 2020, which is "a large multiple of the level of wind penetration actually achieved in any functioning power system with weak interconnection, and is also a multiple of targets enunciated in other countries."

Moreover, such a level of exposure to an intermittent power source demands a significant backup or baseload power generation resource. Nuclear is ideal for this purpose (regardless of its other limitations), so is gas. So maybe we need to build an interconnector to France before 2020; or outsource our electricity generation requirements to EdF? Of course, if the lights start going out over Ireland on a frosty, winter's day when the wind doesn't blow (as on February 16th this year) then we might all be happy to move to France to cuddle up to a nice nuclear power station ...

Dirigiste Economics

I'm in France this week on holiday so the posting frequency may be a bit low (especially if the sun keeps shining like it is ;-)

As always there's value in seeing Ireland as others see us - or don't. The first thing that strikes me is how well the public sector works in France. You can actually see where your taxes are spent. It costs €1 to get the bus from Antibes into Nice, a journey of about 15 kilometres. The train is €3. Both run on time for about 20 hours a day. Not quite your Dublin Bus/Irish Rail pricing structure (or service level).

This is upsetting to my libertarian instincts, but still I do admire value for money; whether it's from the private sector or the public sector. And no, I don't want to pay French levels of tax either. Which is why the recent OECD report on Ireland's public sector is so damning. Instead of focusing on a better, more efficient public sector, our political leaders have embarked on an act of national vandalism called decentralisation - carrying home entire government departments to their constituencies like some kind of hunting trophy. I think only the Khmer Rouge went further ...

So we get the worst of both worlds: high (and hidden) taxes; poor and inefficient public services. So should we go one way or the other: dirigisme ou laissez faire? By the way, there's a notice on the OECD's web site announcing that they are closed from 8th May to 12th May for the Victory Day and Pentecost holidays. While in France ...

France's Polish Paradox

I'm in the French Alps this week on a family holiday learning to ski (or attending ski school to be more precise, I'm not sure about the 'learning' bit!) I took this photo from my hotel room balcony yesterday morning, with my trusty N95. The scenery really is spectacular.

One interesting thing, paradoxically, is how many French people are here ... working in the hotels, cafes, restaurants and pubs. The experience is very different to that back home in Ireland, where (as one American tourist I met here lamented) you could stay in hotels the length and breadth of Ireland and not actually meet any Irish people (meeting Polish, Chinese and other nationalities instead, including French of course!)

Which got me wondering about the decision of countries like France not to let new Eastern European members of the EU enter their workforce after 2005, unlike Ireland (and the UK and Sweden) which opened its doors to all who wished to work (from the first wave of members anyway).

On the one hand it means that you do actually get to meet lots of French people when you holiday in France (and English waiters as well as it happens, working to fund their skiing lifestyle). On the other - and I never thought I'd say this - the service in France isn't as good as you'd get in many comparable places in Ireland in my experience: they just don't seem to have that many staff (often with one waiter looking after 10-15 tables at peak times). I have found myself occasionally wishing for an efficient Polish waiter to take my order rather than leave us waiting.

So French standards of service might have benefited from an influx of (relatively inexpensive) staff from Eastern Europe, even if the service experience might not have been the same for us tourists.

All that said, the quality of food in France remains, as ever, 'superbe'.