Enterprise UK Blog

A flourishing entrepreneurial boom in France is the subject of an article in today’s Financial Times.

Despite the rigours of the recession, France saw more than 500,000 businesses created last year, and the growth rate is set to continue this year. Much of this is being attributed to a French government scheme, launched in January 2009, which, according to the article, removed “much of the hassle and the cost” of setting up a business. This has been achieved by rolling many of the attendant costs – healthcare taxes, income taxes and so on – into one single levy on the new businesses’ revenue.

As the article says, it is indeed too soon to get excited about the French model, though not for the reason the article gives. It could be argued that the impact of the reformed French system has been overstated by the writer. According to credible metrics – such as the GEM –  France has historically been a more entrepreneurial country than some of its European neighbours, including the UK. In the latest GEM survey, 65per cent of French respondents agreed that entrepreneurship was “a good career”, compared with 48 per cent of British respondents. In addition, Four times as many French respondents  (16 per cent) had “entrepreneurial intentions” compared with their British neighbours (4 per cent). Essentially, this evidence suggests that the French reforms have tapped into a pre-existing and ingrained set and attitudes and cultural positions on enterprise, without which they would not have been nearly as effective. In other words, the tax reforms were a catalyst, not a cause.

We could, therefore, draw the wrong lessons from France’s success. Changes to the tax system may or may not have their place- and do please share your thoughts on that and other matters on the Online Enterprise Manifesto - but ultimately it is giving people the confidence, ambition, and skills to be enterprising that will propel us to the entrepreneurial heights scaled by our European neighbours.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Global Entrepreneurship Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.