Why German bosses are heaping unexpected praise on France
It is not how things used to be

A DECADE AGO French business leaders tended to gaze across the Rhine with envious eyes. The German economic model, with its strong exports, conciliatory workforce, low unemployment and productive industry, was a source of widespread admiration. French publishers put out books with such titles as “Should we follow the German model?” Newspaper headlines asked “But how do the Germans do it?” French business chiefs and policymakers alike lamented their country’s inability to emulate their bigger European neighbour.
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Rivals on the Rhine”
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