Record France trade deficit in January has reinitiated the debate about the competitiveness of enterprises and remedies to adopt. This situation is rather paradoxical because the economic policy followed since 2013 has targeted, through tax cuts and social charges reductions, the improvement of their competitiveness. It is what was called the supply-side policy, in opposition to policies which stimulate demand through increase of purchasing power or public expenditures rise.

In January, exports fell by 9.2%, reaching only 37.2 billion euro when imports rose by 2.7%, reaching the unprecedented level of 45.2 billion. The deficit, equal to ...

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Energy transitions issues have taken hold of the French presidential campaign. Some, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Benoît Hamon are reducing it to the stigmatization of nuclear energy, they propose to abandon through the closing of power units in safe technical condition. Others, like Emmanuel Macron or François Fillon, propose a diversification of the electricity mix but are hostile to shale gas exploration. All of them think energy saving investments are the panacea to reduce unemployment, but without defining convincing financial solutions, due to the diversity of the situations.

France is not an isolated case. The American presidential ...

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The crisis which is affecting the French left is less the result of a clash between personal ambitions than of its incapacity to define a vision for the France future and to elaborate proposals capable to conciliate the demand for social progress which is its raison d’être with the new world the country must integrate.

A vision is created from a thought. That one is the fruit of a reflection which is improved by meetings with people from diverse origins all along a life. That was François Mitterrand legacy, which gives him today the stature of a statesman ...

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