I suggest you reading the analysis about potential challenges and imminent dangers France may face.

France is the 7th largest economy in the World and the 2nd largest economy in the European Union. Its financial position reflects an extended period of unprecedented growth that lasted for much of the postwar period. Since 1970s, the annual growth of GDP was about 3,14% per year.

Rich on Institutions and Public Services, France suffers from a shock that shows their limited capacity in times of force majeure. Coronavirus has also became a test on sustainability of the European Liberal Democracy and multilateralism. Current Leading Institutions created after the Second World War show limited powers when it comes to act in the extraordinary situation. Nevertheless, the slogan of this crisis is Solidarity: “When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.”

Massive Joblessness and Business file for bankruptcy.

Around the World, governments release financial supports for workers to prevent the recession.

France has a unique system of Social Security and Employee Protection that allowed compagnies to apply to « Part time unemployment. One in four workers has been put on paid furlough, a support program worth 45 billion euros that the government has unleashed to try to prevent mass joblessness and the widespread collapse of the small and medium-size businesses that make up the backbone of the economy.

Unfortunately, those measures will not be able to save everybody. At the end of confinement, many businesses will bankrupt.  French restaurants, hotels, transportation and wholesalers saw business slump by two-thirds, exacerbated by a sharp drop in tourism. The annual GDP contribution of those sectors is 8%. With people confined to their homes, consumer spending dropped by a third in the first quarter, while the use of credit and debit cards, a measure of consumer activity, sank by half after France’s quarantine was put in place a month ago. With the extended flight restrictions, people are supposed to travel much less during this summer. The experts tell that those fields will take over starting from 2021.

International deglobalization

Covid-19 become not only a huge health crisis but also a crisis of globalization and global governance. During 5 decades, the interconnectedness was constantly increasing, making the World interdependent. The connectivity increases the fragility in front of unquantifiable extreme events such as financial crisis, hostile artificial intelligence, global warming and… pandemics. The mask shortage all over the world is an example of the hyper concentration and network linking that generated systemic risks and amplifies the potential for cascading failures. France medical laboratories do not produce raw materials used to create testing. This delocalisation reduces the capacity of production of tests. The delocalisation of factories would allow to satisfy the request in the matter of tests and handle the potential crisis situations in the future. But the delocalisation of laboratories would not be cost-effective during the normal time, considering current French tax system.

The crisis may allow to reduce global connectedness in terms of travel, trade, digital and data flow. France is under the thread of the deglobalization that would maybe allow building a greater robustness.

European life belt

« J’ai toujours pensé que l’Europe se ferait dans les crises et qu’elle serait la somme des solutions qu’on apporterait à ces crises« 

Jean Monnet

In 2010 there was a division between North and South inside of the European Union. Today, many experts fear that the scenario will repeat.

Member states of the European Union are largely responsable for their own public health services. There are only few EU-level structures that truly play a role in this pandemic. Those include medical and pharmaceutical standards and shared medicine and disease agencies.

From the beginning of the crisis, there has been little coordinated global political leadership on the pandemic. Some states have implemented various responses and others have shut borders without notice. There has been a feeling of a competition rather than a cooperation. Unfortunately, the pandemic became a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness that exposed fundamental weaknesses.

Now, the big challenge is to support member states in the national responses that were chosen.

The coronavirus crisis surely risks for the foreign policy of the European Union on several fronts.The world will certainly change, but geopolitics isn’t likely to fall victim to a virus. So, for all the urgency of rebuilding a ‘healthcare Europe’ and an ‘economic Europe’, there is still a need for a more geopolitical Europe.

There is a risk that the exposed vulnerabilities may be exploited in aim of weakening the European Union.

Jean Monnet may not have been wrong to say that Europe is being built through crises. This threat will only be averted if Europeans finally understand that they need each other. The coronavirus crisis may accelerate this awareness.

Radicalisation Thread

One may think that facing Covid-19, the terrorist threat may seem distant to us, but the danger is still present. The knife attack in Romans-sur-Isère on April 4 caused two deaths. Several researchers explained that there is a possible link between confinement and radicalization, especially via Internet, at a time when screens are so present in our lives. A PhD in social sciences considers that the confinement can clearly be a stage of preparation for the most radicals. People may come out of the confinement with new ideologies. Currently, there is radicalization but it seems more political than religious.

Cyber insecurity

With the pandemic, cybercriminals are using fear, uncertainty and curiosity to adapt their tactics and targeting strategies. Currently there is no system that would resist cyberattacks. With the extension of coronaviruses confinement measures, the unprecedented growth in Internet traffic is accompanied by a sharp increase in cybersecurity incidents. In online training, for example, the volume of IT security incidents treated was « 11 times higher » the week of March 16 (the first of the confinement and closings of schools in France), compared to the beginning of 2020 as a whole. In collaborative services, this volume was 8.5 times higher in the week concerned, in travel 5.3 times more. Non-essential retail trade (3.8 times) and entertainment services (2.8 times) also saw a significant increase in the number of cyber incidents.

Health vs Economy

Countries are trying to balance public health with concerns that a prolonged, deep recession may prove more costly than keeping their economies frozen to stem the spread of the virus. Economists expect countries to rebound slowly whenever their shutdowns end.

The economic damage from the coronavirus has been faster, deeper and spread across nearly every economic sector. With nonessential workers ordered to stay indoors, construction activity in France plunged by 75 percent, while industrial activity shrank by half during the first quarter.

France officially slid into a recession after suffering one of the worst quarterly contractions in more than 50 years. 6 percent from January to April are estimated. For every two weeks the population remains under confinement, the economy shrinks by at least 1.5 percent.

Franco-African Cooperation

Politics of Emmanuel Macron has been very supportive towards African Continent. His political program contained a construction of a closer relationship based on mutual aid and cooperation.

World bank notes that African economies are victims of the sharp fall in the growth of their main trading partners (particularly China, the euro zone and the United States), commodity prices, decline in tourist activity, effects of containment.

Because of the deep helplessness of African countries, following French historic defeats and contemporary failures, the conditions for a continent’s recovery depended on three factors: a disruption of the world order so profound that it calls into question the balance of powers on the international level; the decline of Western powers (particularly France in the case of French-speaking Africa); and the concomitant emergence in Africa of a generation of capable leaders.

As you see the dangers and challenges within and from outside French borders are real, perceived and imminent.

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