"Pro-Chirac French [parliamentarians] skulked at the back of the hall," The Times of London reported. But Jean Quatremer, the veteran Brussels correspondent for the French left-wing newspaper Libération, was quoted by The Times as saying: "For a long time we have been talking about the French social model, as opposed to the horrible Anglo-Saxon model, but we now see that it is our model that is a horror."

Given that Ireland received more foreign direct investment from the U.S. in 2003 than China received from the U.S., the Germans and French may want to take a few tips from the Celtic Tiger. One of the first reforms Ireland instituted was to make it easier to fire people, without having to pay years of severance. Sounds brutal, I know. But the easier it is to fire people, the more willing companies are to hire people.

Harry Kraemer Jr., the former C.E.O. of Baxter International, a medical equipment maker that has made several investments in Ireland, explained that "the energy level, the work ethic, the tax optimization and the flexibility of the labor supply" all made Ireland infinitely more attractive to invest in than France or Germany, where it was enormously costly to let go even one worker. The Irish, he added, had the self-confidence that if they kept their labor laws flexible some jobs would go, but new jobs would keep coming -- and that is exactly what has happened.

Ireland is "playing offense," Mr. Kraemer said, while Germany and France are "playing defense," and the more they try to protect every old job, the fewer new ones they attract.

But Ireland has started to play offense in a lot of other ways as well. It initially focused on attracting investments from U.S. high-tech companies by offering them a flexible, educated work force and low corporate taxes. But now, explained Ireland's minister of education, Mary Hanafin, the country has started a campaign to double the number of Ph.D.'s it graduates in science and engineering by 2010, and it has set up various funds to get global companies, and just brainy people, to come to Ireland to do research. Ireland is now actively recruiting Chinese scientists in particular.