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Thread: French-German Border Shapes More Than Territory

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[quote=XIAOBAIHE,460736]One thing is abundantly clear, however. The German economy has powered far ahead of France’s, and the gap is widening every year. Germany has maintained its industrial base and competitive edge, both technologically and in terms of cost, while France lacks a large sector of medium-size industrial enterprises and depends much more on services. The French share of global exports has steadily fallen, while the German share has steadily risen.

French salaries have increased in real terms while German salaries have fallen, making French workers more expensive and thus less productive and competitive. French social protections for the unemployed are also much more lavish, especially after the Germans pushed through the so-called Hartz reforms, which largely limited unemployment benefits to 12 months. In France, the duration is 23 months for those under 50 and three years for those over 50, many of whom never work again.

In part to pay for those benefits, the cost to business of an hour’s labor is 11 percent higher in France. But there is less job security in Germany, and more Germans do part-time work. The Germans do not have a centrally fixed minimum wage, as the French do.

The practical results of these trends are visible in these border towns, where the shape of industry — largely small- to medium-size metal-working companies or factories — is similar. For example, there are 10 times as many job offers a month on the German side as on the French one, said Norbert Mattusch, who works on cross-border cooperation for the German Federal Employment Agency in Freiburg.

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