BBC新闻Word格式文档下载.docx

1、BBC新闻#8.#An inconvenient truth#A WEEK after France was shaken by terrorist shootings in and around Toulouse, candidates for the countrys presidential election have gone back to the stump. The tone is a little less shrill, the contenders respectful of the sombre mood. Yet the return to electioneering

2、 has a surreal quality nonetheless, unlinked to the new concerns about security. For the country faces an imminent economic shock, which the presidential candidates are utterly failing to acknowledge.# The awkward truth is that France, the second-biggest economy in the euro zone after Germany, faces

3、 a public-finance squeeze. French public spending now accounts for 56% of GDP （see chart 1）, compared with an OECD average of 43.3%:# higher even than in Sweden. For years France has offered its people a Swedish-style social model of services, benefits and protection, but has failed to create enough

4、 wealth to pay for it.#Today France continues to behave as if it enjoyed Swedens or Germanys public finances, when in truth they are closer to those of Spain. Although France and Germany have comparable public-debt levels, at over 80% of GDP, Germanys is now inching downwards whereas Frances is at 9

5、0% and rising. One rating agency has already stripped France of its AAA credit rating over worries about high debt and low growth. The countrys auditor, the Cour des Comptes, chaired by Didier Migaud, a former Socialist deputy, has warned that unless “difficult decisions” are taken this year and nex

6、t on spending, public debt could reach 100% by 2015 or 2016.# The underlying problem is that, over the past ten years, France has lost competitiveness. In 2000 hourly labour costs in France were 8% lower than those in Germany, its main trading partner;# today, they are 10% higher （see chart 2）. Fren

7、ch exports have stagnated while Germanys have boomed. An employer today pays twice as much in social charges in France as he does in Germany. Frances unemployment rate is 10% next to 5.8% in Germanyand has not dipped below 7% for nearly 30 years.#This erosion of French competitiveness raises hard qu

8、estions about the underlying social compact. Frenchmen cherish the notion that everyone has an equal right to decent services in good times and a generous safety net in bad. But what sort of level of support, in sickness, joblessness, infancy or old age, can France really afford to offer its citizen

9、s?# How can the country justify its massive public administrationa millefeuille of communes, departments, regions and the central statewhich employs 90 civil servants per 1,000 population, compared with 50 in Germany?# How can France lighten the tax burden, including payroll social charges, so as to

10、 encourage entrepreneurship and job creation?#Put simply, France is about to face the tough choices that Gerhard Schr#der, Germanys former chancellor, confronted in the early 2000s or that Sweden did in the mid-1990s, when its own unsustainable social system collapsed. The euro-zone crisis, which ha

11、s made bond markets unsparing of slack economic management, means that these decisions have become both more urgent and more difficult. Whoever is elected at Frances two-round presidential election on April 22nd and May 6th will face a choice. If he fails to be tough enough on the deficit, markets w

12、ill react badly, and France could find itself at the centre of a new euro-zone financing crisis. If he tackles the deficit with tax increases across the board and even spending cuts, voters will not be remotely prepared for it.#“The real risk for the euro zone now is not Greece, but France,” says a

13、top French finance boss. Nicolas Baverez, a commentator who foresaw the countrys looming debt problems in a bestselling book of 2003, agrees:# “Im convinced that France will be the centre of the next shock in the euro zone.”#The candidates, however, are masterfully managing to duck all this. Before

14、the Toulouse shootings intervened, the campaign turned around such pressing matters as halal slaughterhouses, immigration and tax exiles. Although both Nicolas Sarkozy, the Gaullist incumbent, and Fran#ois Hollande, his Socialist rival, have embraced deficit reduction, each vowing to bring Frances b

15、udget deficit down to 3% of GDP next year, neither is promising to do so by making radical spending cuts.#Both presidential front-runners instead rely heavily on balancing the books through tax increases. Mr Sarkozy has already raised corporate and income tax. He now says he wants to tax even those

16、who leave France for tax reasons. Mr Hollande promises a 75% top income-tax rate on those earning over 1m （$1.3m） a year, which means they would pay over 90% after social charges. He also wants to increase the annual wealth tax, levied annually on assets worth over 1.3m, and tax dividends more. He vows to raise the minimum wage, create 60,000 teaching jobs, lower the minimum retirement age to 60 for those who began work young, and “renegotiate” the European fiscal compact