France and Italy: Should the pre-euro model be missed?

Since the euro zone’s creation, France and Italy have faced very tight economic policy constraints: excessive growth in labour costs or insufficient savings to finance investment can no longer be corrected by devaluing the exchange rate; fiscal deficits are limited and cannot be monetised by the country’s central bank; interest rates are obviously those of the euro zone as a whole. So should their pre-euro economic model be missed? A comparison between the 1980s-90s and the 2000s-2010s with regard to: The evolution of purchasing power; Public spending and the tax burden; Real interest rates and investment; The evolution of cost competitiveness and market shares; Employment and unemployment, s hows that the Italians may have reason to miss the 1980s-90s but not the French.