Are times changing in France?

Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, recently gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he said some very un-French things: The Scandinavian economic model, combining market flexibility with a high degree of social protection, ?is full of lessons for countries such as France, Germany and Italy?, Christian Noyer, governor of the ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, recently gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he said some very un-French things:

The Scandinavian economic model, combining market flexibility with a high degree of social protection, ?is full of lessons for countries such as France, Germany and Italy?, Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, has argued. The willingness of France’s central bank governor to admit in an interview with the Financial Times that other countries might have found a better answer to the forces of globalisation highlights how the political debate in Paris has shifted since the country rejected the European Union constitution in May. Asked about last month?s appeal by Tony Blair, UK prime minister, for Europe to rethink its social model, Mr Noyer said: ?I tend to agree with that.? Sweden, Finland and Denmark have seen some of the fastest growth and lowest inflation rates among the main continental European economies. Sweden, which plunged into financial crises in the early 1990s, has re-invented its famed social model in the past decade. ?One of the key elements in the way these countries work is that they have mixed a greater level of flexibility in labour and product markets ? a bit like the UK economy ? with a high degree of social protection, which is traditional in continental Europe,? he said. Social protection, he added, did not mean ?a job for life even if your company is sinking. Protection means you have a social safety net to help you during a transitional period, and a whole system of education, training and retraining that obliges people to find a new job?.

Read more of the interview here — in which he gives faint praise to new French PM Dominique de Villepin while dismissing Villepin’s suggestion for closer political consultations with the European Central Bank.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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