France: Unfortunately, the COVID crisis is weakening what was going well and exacerbating structural weaknesses

The COVID crisis is having particularly negative effects on France: Economic sectors that were previously France’s strong sectors are being weakened: luxury goods, aerospace, tourism; Structural weaknesses are being exacerbated, in particular France’s unattractiveness for companies due to its combination of low labour force skills and high production costs and its very heavy corporate tax burden. A fter the crisis, companies will try to produce even more in countries with low production costs; Higher corporate debt at a time when France was the only OECD country where the corporate debt ratio was already rising.