(One minute read)

At the moment, it seems as if he had only one overriding goal:

The most unpopular French leader in postwar history.

To run for re-election in 2017 — despite everything.

He still has 18 months left to shed his reputation as the most hapless president of the Fifth Republic.

When government spending accounts for nearly 60% of the economy, the private sector goes about business in a straight jacket faithfully following rules, regulations and edicts handed down from socialist leaning politicians and professional bureaucrats.

The idea that France will crawl out of its economic coma is sheer fantasy– a virtually impossible mission.

The elite of the bureaucrats and politicians, including Mr Hollande attended the Ecole Nationale d’Administration which manufactures a ruling class with a firm political grip on the country.

About 5 million Frenchmen are now out of work,a figure that would have been much higher had the French statistics office not revised its method of calculation.

His achievement that Le Pen has managed to turn the Front from a protest party into a real political force. Instead of opposing Le Pen’s nationalism, he has continued the policies of his predecessor, Sarkozy, a policy of empty promises and hollow words.

The Front National now has twice as many seats in the European Parliament as his own Socialist Party.

In a perfect world both Hollande and Cameron will be prosecuted by the ICC for destabilizing Libya and Syria, killing 300,000 Syrians, making millions refugees, and causing the terrible refugee/migrant crisis in Europe.

By tying his reelection bid so clearly to the unemployment rate, which has risen almost uninterrupted for the past 33 months, Hollande has given himself an exit.

HERE ARE A FEW HARD FACTS WHY FRANCE IS IN SUCH A MESS.

Even for the French, setting up a business is renowned to be incredibly tough.

Compared to the U.K. and the U.S. there is an enormous amount of complicated paperwork, not just to set up the company, but also to run it afterwards, never mind to close it.

The only solution is to “waste” money on lawyers and accountants in the hope that they do a good job, or do the best you can yourself.

Apart from the natural drawbacks of cultural and language differences, foreigners have an enormous disadvantage when it comes to the limited extent of their contacts:

French business thrives on personal contacts. “Most deals are done as a result of friendship rather than the quality or price of a product.”

Unfortunately, foreigners are unlikely to have networks here, so unless you have the means to recruit someone with hundreds of pals in high up places you may find it very difficult to expand the scope of your business beyond the Anglophone community.

Something else to bear in mind is that successful businessmen in France are regarded by the public with a mixture of awe, jealousy and suspicion.

This might explain why France is so short of people raring to create their own companies and so full of people dying to get careers in the civil service.

Unfortunately it also means that as an employer you’re never right. Employees who are sacked are always right, as is the “fisc” (or tax office).

If your company eventually fails, you may well end up being responsible for the liabilities, even though the structure of the company appeared to offer “limited liability.”

In spite of all this, LIVING IN FRANCE unearthed a few survivors.

“I think it’s extremely important to know French people, to have French friends who can help you to approach the system with the right attitude.” It is all about understanding the system, trying to cooperate with the authorities and filling out the forms correctly.

In France paperwork is much more important THAN EARNING A LIVING.

Without serious labor reforms and easier entry into the marketplace by French entrepreneurs and policies that make it better for them to be in France and not emigrate elsewhere for better business tax climate, he is wasting his time and the French public’s as well.

I would describe him as tactician president so well suited for internal party politics and so inadequate as a leader will avoid any meaningful reform and claim that success as his own.

He has become a joke.

He keeps making promises which have no chance of ever materializing, refuses to see reality even when it hits him in the face and his administration is the most incompetent since World War II. Piketty, the famous economist, is so disgusted with him (the way we all are here in France) that he turned down the Legion of Honor.

Pathetic president, government. The country slides further towards Greece.

France needs a President without tunnel vision.

Hell will freeze over before the French established order cedes real support to its home-grown, fledgling commercial talent/wealth creators. That’s why most leave.

Tow the line i.e. ‘do as you’re told and work for the government (social elite), or we’ll have ya’ is the French way of things. Great, if you’re one of them.

France tolerates no-one that sits outside the narrow confines of centrist power. No Second Chamber, no Religion, increasingly no EU and definitively not the lowest of the low, some maverick start up businessman with big ideas.

The climate in France is revolutionary – at least according to commentators in parts of the French media.

Polls show that there is now a general “ras l’bol” (fed-upness) in France with successive governments’ inability to solve France’s massive problems.

A beautiful country where everything is Interdire ( Prohibited)

France won’t be saved by bureaucracy nor by Le Pen (The Front National created by Jean-Marie Le Pen), which used Vichy legislation as a blueprint for its own anti-immigration programme.