Mr. Sarkozy and Mrs. Merkel have had a strained relationship, but it has improved markedly in the pressure cooker of the euro crisis, and Mrs. Merkel once had plans to campaign for him. But she appeared to back off recently when it seemed that her open support might hurt Mr. Sarkozy more than help, by wounding French pride and making him look like a supplicant.

Nevertheless, Mr. Sarkozy is betting that the problems in the French economy, where youth unemployment is 23 percent nationwide and exports are declining, are so profound that voters will overcome their deep-seated reluctance and be more receptive to at least a variation on the German model. But it is not always clear what that would entail, and whether the French would ever stand for it.

Image Credit... The New York Times

One thing is abundantly clear, however. The German economy has powered far ahead of France’s, and the gap is widening every year. Germany has maintained its industrial base and competitive edge, both technologically and in terms of cost, while France lacks a large sector of medium-size industrial enterprises and depends much more on services. The French share of global exports has steadily fallen, while the German share has steadily risen.

French salaries have increased in real terms while German salaries have fallen, making French workers more expensive and thus less productive and competitive. French social protections for the unemployed are also much more lavish, especially after the Germans pushed through the so-called Hartz reforms, which largely limited unemployment benefits to 12 months. In France, the duration is 23 months for those under 50 and three years for those over 50, many of whom never work again.

In part to pay for those benefits, the cost to business of an hour’s labor is 11 percent higher in France. But there is less job security in Germany, and more Germans do part-time work. The Germans do not have a centrally fixed minimum wage, as the French do.

The practical results of these trends are visible in these border towns, where the shape of industry — largely small- to medium-size metal-working companies or factories — is similar. For example, there are 10 times as many job offers a month on the German side as on the French one, said Norbert Mattusch, who works on cross-border cooperation for the German Federal Employment Agency in Freiburg.