Facing TV cameras on the sun-dappled lawn of the Elysee Palace earlier this month, Francois Hollande berated the French for their notorious pessimism and told them a long-awaited economic recovery had already arrived.
It was part of the president’s unashamedly upbeat drive to give what he calls a “jolt of confidence” to Europe’s second largest economy: things will start looking better if only you believe they are.
Yet for the ordinary person in the street right up to the boardrooms of France’s biggest companies, the outlook still looks a lot less comforting than it does from the manicured gardens of the Elysee.
“There’s less and less work and more and more people fighting for it,” said Nicolas, 42, self-employed for the past month after he had to shut down the kitchen installation company he launched 13 years ago.
“Things are not getting better. On the contrary, the crisis is there to stay,” he said as he took a break from work at a fast-food venue in central Paris.
Backing Hollande’s assertion that France has already left a shallow recession behind it, recent figures have shown a rise in industry morale to its highest in over a year and industrial output is better than expected.
