PARIS: France needs a massive drive to simplify everything from the labour code to taxes and business regulations, the liberal economic think tank OECD argued in its annual economic survey. We’ve summed up exactly what it wants France to do.
The liberal economic think tank OECD made it clear on Thursday exactly what is wrong with France and what it needs to do to dig itself out of the economic doldrums.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development laid into France in its economic survey of the country, published on Thursday, telling Paris that it needs to dramatically simplify life for businesses and workers if it wants to arrest its flagging economy.
While the OECD noted France’s “enviable standard of living”, “high productivity” and “only average income inequality that hasn’t worsened despite the crisis” the think tank said the country’s economic recovery has been slow and unemployment was still rising.
The country is in urgent need of simplification to unravel its “significant complexity of systems and institutions,” the report concluded although it did compliment France on the “welcome pro-growth structural reforms” it has already made.
Economists from the OECD, who presented their report to France’s Finance Minister Michel Sapin on Thursday, said the government really needs make reform of the labour market its top priority.
It criticises the “strong protection” afforded to those workers on long open-ended contracts which is “hindering mobility” and the country’s notorious 3,000- page long labour code which it says “restricts flexibility in both the private and public sectors”.
