It's the opposite. French labour policy for example is a giant political boondoggle. It's one series of short-signed populist back-room deals after the next.
What 'serious reform' looks like is the 'Hartz concept' [1] - nothing like it exists really in the rest of the EU.
The results of French labour policy mean consistently almost 2x the unemployment rate of US/UK/Germany, for example. [2]
This is not an example of 'strong' it's an example of 'very weak' and it hurts quite a lot of people.
A perfect example of shortsighted, populist, untenable policy: Hollande's 'Supertax' on the rich [3]. This was an an act of self-destruction, not construction.
While Hartz is widely viewed as being a giant success, none of the French economic reforms made sense, and none of them have helped.
And FYI Europe doesn't have a middle class, and remember includes places like Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Greece, S. Italy which are actually quite poor.
European nations individually have 'decent' Gini coefficients, but if you do the 'EU-wide' coefficient it's quite bad. Average Slovak is nowhere near the average Swede.
It's the opposite. French labour policy for example is a giant political boondoggle. It's one series of short-signed populist back-room deals after the next.
What 'serious reform' looks like is the 'Hartz concept' [1] - nothing like it exists really in the rest of the EU.
The results of French labour policy mean consistently almost 2x the unemployment rate of US/UK/Germany, for example. [2]
This is not an example of 'strong' it's an example of 'very weak' and it hurts quite a lot of people.
A perfect example of shortsighted, populist, untenable policy: Hollande's 'Supertax' on the rich [3]. This was an an act of self-destruction, not construction.
While Hartz is widely viewed as being a giant success, none of the French economic reforms made sense, and none of them have helped.
And FYI Europe doesn't have a middle class, and remember includes places like Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Greece, S. Italy which are actually quite poor.
European nations individually have 'decent' Gini coefficients, but if you do the 'EU-wide' coefficient it's quite bad. Average Slovak is nowhere near the average Swede.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartz_concept
[2] https://data.oecd.org/unemp/unemployment-rate.htm
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-7...