[Nous avons traduit en anglais cet article de vérification d’une enquête du journal Newsweek sur « la chute de la France »]

Hardly a week goes by without an article in the anglosaxon press analysing France’s successes, decline, advantages and hindrances. January 3rd, it was Newsweek’s turn to publish an article on France’s decline (The fall of France

The analysis written by journalist Janine di Giovanni on the failures and excesses of François Hollande’s policies is not very original – many French, on the right-leaning side of the political spectrum, agree with it.

But Miss di Giovanni – whose legitimacy to cover this topic relies on the fact that she lives in Paris – wrote a number of factual mistakes, which strongly undermine the credibility of her demonstration.

1/ « Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent. »

We do not know if those numbers relate to the social security taxes or the income tax ; it seems the article mixes both up. But saying that the « top tax rate » is 75 % is plain wrong.

Beyond 500 000 euros in yearly revenue, the maximum tax rate on the revenue is 49 %. The 75 % tax bracket was censored by the Conseil constitutionnel, and is now paid by the companies.

Claiming that “a great many” French people pay over 70 % taxes is completely wrong. It might be possible to reach this kind of tax rate by adding the income taxes, social security taxes and the Impôt de solidarité sur la fortune (the special tax for ultra-high revenues), but by definition, the only people concerned are the wealthiest French residents.

In 2012, there were less than 300 000 people paying the impôt de solidarité sur la fortune (ISF), half of them possessing less than 2 millions euros in assets.

2/ »As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth – business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere. »

The idea that France is experiencing a massive tax exile is widespread in some political circles and sometimes covered in the press, but there are absolutely no tangible proof that such an exile is happening.

A report by the French Ministry of Economy from late 2013 explains that the number of French citizens legally settling abroad has grown by 1.1% in 2012, versus 6% in 2011.

Furthermore, it is very difficult to isolate the reasons that drive some French people towards expatriation – but it is certain that the tax rate cannot be the only reason, far from it. Finally, many expatriated French people are also coming back to France…

3/ « The problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur. »

Miss di Giovanni is referring to something George W. Bush allegedly said in 2002. This could be used ironically here, even if it’s far from certain. Anyway, the English word “entrepreneur” is actually borrowed from the French word … “entrepreneur”.

4/ »The official unemployment figure is more than 3 million; unofficially it’s more like 5 million. »

The number of unemployed French people, in all categories, is not close to 5 millions : it actually is over 5 millions since early 2012 – quite officially.

The “official unemployment figure” of three millions is the number of metropolitan unemployed people in the administrative category A. This category regroups people who have had no paid activity whatsoever during the last month, whereas unemployed people in categories B and C have had some amount of work. Unemployed people in categories D and E do not have to seek a new job for various reasons (for instance, they might be only a few months away from legal retirement).

If you add the unemployed people in all those categories, there were in October 5.5 million unemployed people in France. This number is not “unofficial” : it is published by the Ministry of employment and freely available.

>> Lire : Pour y voir clair sur les chiffres du chômage ?

5/ »A half liter of milk in Paris, for instance, costs nearly $4 – the price of a gallon in an American store. »

Even if Janine di Giovanni lives in the very posh VIth arrondissement of Paris, we wonder where she does her grocery shopping ; the highest price we could find for a liter of organic milk was 1.42 euros. That’s about one fourth of the price quoted by Miss Giovanni ; you would have to buy organic growth milk at the Bon Marché, the famous luxury shop, to find a price close to the one quoted by Newsweek.

6/ »Diapers were free ; nannies were tax-deductible; free nurseries existed in every neighborhood ».

Except at the Secours populaire or other goodwill organisations for the less fortunates, there is no way in France to get free diapers for parents.

It is true that the prestation d’accueil du jeune enfant (PAJE) enables parents to deduce from their revenues part of their childkeeping costs, but this system is not specific to France : in the United States, there is for instance the « Household and Dependent Care Credit », which is similar.

There are also no free nurseries in France. The nurseries are either municipal or associative, but everybody pays for them, even if a large part of the cost can be compensated by social benefits.

Finally, if France has quite an important number of nurseries, not every parent can have access to one. Estimates shows that about 350.000 babies are waiting for a nursery. Working parents have a priority of access ; a recent report by the Cour des comptes estimates that only 8 to 13% of the children of modest families benefit from them, versus 64% for the wealthiest families.

7/ « Who cares about the BRICS – the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – when we have Paris? It is a tunnel-vision philosophy that will kill France. »

It seems Miss di Giovanni didn’t bother to do a couple of Google searches to fact-check this anonymous quote.

France is the 11th country in the world for investments in foreign countries, the 3rd in Europe. All in all, a rather attractive country, wouldn’t you say ?

French people – because of a high degree of snobbery inherited from Sartre, claims the article – are not interested in emerging markets ? According to the CNUCED, China is the number two investor in France, with amounts growing by 35% in 2012, and Russian investments in France have doubled in a year. And if 69.9% of French investments abroad occur in Europe, another 17.2% are done in emerging markets (including 5% for Brazil alone).

8/ ‘ »There are 36 special retirement regimes – which means, for example, a female hospital worker or a train driver can retire earlier than those in the private sector because of their « harsh working conditions, » even though they can never be fired.' »

Once more, this is a worrying approximation. There are, outside of the administration, 15 “special” retirement regimes.

Among those, the railway workers from the SNCF : train drivers can indeed have an early retirement. But the réforme Fillon of 2007 has set up a progressive alignment of their pension system to the conditions of the private sector.

Regarding the public servants working in hospitals, they can retire at 60 – versus 62 elsewhere – but there are some conditions to those early retirements. And nurses, just like train drivers, can be fired for professional fault.

9/ »The French state also paid for all new mothers, including me, to see a physical therapist twice a week to get our stomachs toned again. Essentially it was seen as a baby-making opportunity (your husband is not going to touch you if you still have your baby fat – how very French!) after World War I, when so many young men were killed in the trenches.' »

The French social security reimburses mainly perineal re-education after the pregnancy if the doctor deems it necessary. The French medical system allows a doctor to prescribe physiotherapy sessions if he thinks the patient needs them, and those sessions are then reimbursed, pregnancy or not.

Claiming that this principle dates back to World War I is nonsense : the French social security was created in 1945… Another nonsense : those sessions are not meant to make women more “desirable” to encourage natality, since those treatments are for the perineum, not the stomach.

These are the biggest mistakes we found in this article. We will spare you the fact that Miss di Giovanni uses the private-and-very-expensive Ecole alsacienne as a general example, the fact that finance minister Pierre Moscovici speaks plain english, or the global confusion about the status of the intermittents du spectacle, not to forget the somewhat dubious comparisons with the revocation of the Edit de Nantes (a royal charter that granted freedom of religion in France).

Samuel Laurent et Jonathan Parienté