04/13/2012 Letter of Edouard Carmignac
Paris, April 10th 2012
Dear Sir, Madam,
An American friend once confessed me why he was so fond of our country: “I love France because the French can’t stand one another. Their shared antipathy is a source of national inertia, and ensures that the quality of life is preserved”.
The tediousness of the French election campaign reveals these rifts. Major issues of competitiveness and debt reduction are being largely ignored. They should be serving as a national wake-up call. Instead, we watch heightening of tensions towards entrepreneurs and immigrants.
Apart from a few high-profile figures, highlighted by the media ad nauseam, wealth in France and Europe is no longer inherited. Most fortunes are held by entrepreneurs, who generated their wealth and have been sharing it with the population in the form of new jobs, taxes and welfare payments. As we know well, small and medium sized businesses are the main source of job creation. Is it really intended to discourage entrepreneurs and hasten further their move abroad? Instead of the German model, would France prefer to follow the example of Greece, where an exodus of productive talents has turned a formerly lively country into a haven for pensioners and tourists?
The integration of immigrant populations remains an open wound in French society, of which the recent tragedy in Toulouse can be seen as a painful reminder. Yet ethnic diversity should be an asset, not a handicap. Redoubled effort for a fundamental overhaul of education, training and recruitment is needed to accelerate the process of integration. It might then be recognized in certain quarters that the obsession with immigration masks the major underlying problem of a growing brain drain. Can France continue to have more than one in three graduates from its top universities leave the country?
The move to curb public debt is a forward-looking initiative which should help address the main social inequality facing our ageing European societies, the increasing inequality between generations. It is up to us to pick up the bill for our own excesses, not leave the problem to our children and grandchildren. Achieving fairness across generations requires effort from everyone, and it is the job of our politicians to prepare us for this. In a country where almost half of the electorate are retired or civil servants, this is no mean feat. Given voters’ disaffection as predicted by the polls, it would not necessarily be politically suicidal.
The French should focus their energies on these generous and forward-looking themes, and put their divisions to rest. Such is the price to improve their collective well-being and protect a quality of life that is still much admired.
Yours faithfully,
Edouard Carmignac
