The French implosion: tax-and-spend politics has driven Paris to the brink.

• Author: de Rugy, Veronique
• Position: Columns - Column

WHILE COMMENTATORS remain captivated by the bleak saga of such Eurozone basket cases as Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, another European Union member is quietly slipping into economic despair. After years of fiscal mismanagement, France is in a bad, bad place.

France spends more of its GDP on government--57 percent--than any other country in the Eurozone. The country's unemployment rate is at a 16-year high of 11 percent, and a startling number of richer and younger French people are leaving for more hospitable economic environments abroad.

It has gotten so bad that France's crisis-wracked neighbors might be catching up: A November 2013 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report warned that Paris is "falling behind southern European countries that have cut labor costs and become leaner and meaner."

The data is even more striking when compared to Germany. With an unemployment rate of percent and a private savings rate of 12.1 percent, Germany has been growing at 1 percent annually while France sputters along at 0 percent.

It is tempting to blame this on the 2007 recession, but the reality is that France hasn't been doing well in years. Since the creation of the Eurozone in 1999, France has only managed a 0.8 percent annual growth rate. Germany, by contrast, has grown three times faster over those 15 years.

Across all available indexes of national economic freedom, France scores very poorly for a developed nation. The 2013 Economic Freedom of the World Index, published by the Fraser Institute and Cato Institute, aggregates and weighs national data on five broad categories--size of government, rule of law and property rights protection, sound money, freedom of international trade, and regulation. How does France rank? An unimpressive 40th, down from 25th in 1980.

This effect is echoed in a similar but more qualitative survey from The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation. Their Index of Economic Freedom for 2013 ranks France 62nd in the world, right between Thailand and Rwanda. And the trendlines in both studies are similar: The country's good or average scores in the areas of rule of law, regulation, and free trade are dragged down by bloated government and high taxes. Economic freedom is a good indicator of prosperity, and France's is sorely lacking.

Unfortunately, the French government's response to anemic growth and higher unemployment has been to tack toward less economic freedom, not more. Loyal to his...