When the truth hurts…

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a pro-European London-based think-tank, awarded the European Union a grade C for "try harder" in his organisation’s pre-summit Lisbon Scorecard. When it came to assessing the prospects for France, however, Grant handed out a grade F for "fail".

This should not have come as a surprise to Medef, the French business lobby, even though in its contribution to the Lisbon assessment of its European parent organisation, BusinessEurope, it declared, against all the evidence, that France is doing better than Germany in economic and social reform.

How can French business, aware that it is falling so woefully behind its competitor across the Rhine, give its government’s reform efforts a higher grade than the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, (whose members have never seen their profit margins so high)? The explanation, according to one observer, is "the French election".

French business leaders do not want to criticise the centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy - a senior member of the current French government - for fear of assisting the candidate of the left Ségolène Royal.

At a meeting in Brussels this week attended by Commission President José Manuel Barroso, Grant was asked about the French election. He said: "I am not optimistic about the cause of reform in France. President Jacques Chirac said that ‘liberalism’ is worse than ‘communism,’ not just once, he actually repeated it."

This, Grant asserted, was a true reflection of the views of the French intelligentsia which sets the tone for the nation. Until this élite begins to learn from the centre-left in other social democratic countries - not including the UK - that reform is the way to protect Europe’s social model, not destroy it, he felt that the French response to the challenges of globalisation would be to stick its collective head, ostrich-like, into the sand.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a pro-European London-based think-tank, awarded the European Union a grade C for "try harder" in his organisation’s pre-summit Lisbon Scorecard. When it came to assessing the prospects for France, however, Grant handed out a grade F for "fail".