Record fall in GDP; Economy; Gender learning; Other news; Soundbites; Plus ça change...

Speech by Philippe Marland, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the OECD, delivered at the OECD on 18 March to mark the 2009 Journée internationale de la Francophonie, a day dedicated to the French-speaking world.

Growth is likely to fall below 1% in 2008 as a whole amid sharply deteriorating global economic conditions in the latter part of the year, due primarily to the financial crisis. The impact of this turbulence will reverberate well into 2009, with negative growth expected until the middle of the year, followed by a gradual pick-up of activity to above potential rates by mid-2010.

2008 will be a decisive year in the battle against climate change. Hopefully, it will see us forge an international consensus so an agreement can be reached in Copenhagen in 2009 that will allow us to build on the Kyoto Protocol.

Long ago I gave up trying to break through the so-called “glass ceiling” that has kept women like me out of higher management. Instead I decided to create new enterprises in which management could be reinvented by women. On 8 March 2005, I launched a business incubator devoted exclusively to projects by female entrepreneurs.

Can cutting down on sugar subsidies lead to healthier trade competition and trimmer prices? The 2005 European Union market reforms aim to thin EU farmers’ sugar subsidies and cut out obsolete sugar mills. Sugar Policy Reform in the European Union and in World Sugar Markets maps out how this might work.

Climate change is a pressing challenge, requiring leadership and determined action. At the same time, people are concerned that policies do not put them at an economic disadvantage or unnecessarily undermine their welfare.

Can governments balance these concerns? The OECD’s Environment Policy Committee meets at ministerial level on 28-29 April 2008 under the theme of global competitiveness. Some non-OECD developing countries will also participate, as will stakeholders from business, labour and civil society.

After slowing in 2007, growth is projected to average below 2% in 2008, with a weak first half but some rebound thereafter, and continuing at near potential rates in 2009. Job creation will continue, albeit at a slower pace, allowing for further slight declines in the unemployment rate. Following several years of budgetary consolidation, no further improvement in the budget deficit is expected, with a reduction in both revenues and spending in relation to GDP.

Cotis leads top French bureau–
Jean-Philippe Cotis, the OECD’s chief economist, has been appointed as director general of the French national statistics institute INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, or the National Statistics and Economic Studies Institute).

Japan, the US, the Netherlands and Italy present the face of Secretary-General Angel Gurría’s newly appointed team of deputy secretaries-general (DSGs) to guide the OECD into the next era. Mari Amano will bring his 34 years of experience as a Japanese foreign affairs official to take charge of the Development Cluster and Policy Coherence dossier.

Kiyotaka Akasaka, deputy secretary-general at the OECD, has been appointed United Nations Undersecretary general for communications and public information. Mr Akasaka came to the OECD in 2003 and has most recently been responsible for the OECD’s work on development, the environment, sustainable development and for partnerships with other international organisations. Mr Akasaka takes up his new post in spring 2007.

Just 53% of over-50s in France are in employment. This is a low rate compared with other OECD countries whose average is 59%. The gap is particularly wide among less-skilled workers: in 2002, only 51% of unskilled men aged 50 to 64 in France had jobs, compared with 88% in Iceland, 80% in Switzerland and 78% in Japan.

France is a country with more than its fair share of great industrial leaders. This is largely due to its steadfast policies in favour of growth and corporate mergers, which have produced world leaders in the pharmaceuticals, banking, steel, automobile and oil industries. So why the surprise or concern at the profits they are making? Should we not, on the contrary, be rejoicing in their success? Their profits, on a par with those of their competitors, are the only real guarantee of their independence.

Though I am a political rather than economic journalist, I grapple with economic realities in my work. Frankly, I find it hard to trust the experts – even those at the OECD! (Maybe my scepticism is typically French, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

The notion that cutting working time could be an integral part of the fight against high unemployment has been a very controversial one, particularly in Europe. Yet, such was the main policy initiative of the French government in the employment field over the second half of the 1990s.

France’s economy has been doing relatively well, but it could do a lot better if it made fuller use of young and old in the workforce. The challenge is, how?

Resistance to pension reform marked the French political scene in May and June of this year, as public sector unions demonstrated against proposed legislation. We asked Martine Durand from the OECD Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate to explain the basic reasons for the reforms and the protests.

France is a country of contradictory images when it comes to the environment. Traffic-filled cities, yet fast and extensive public transport; bucolic expanses of farmland but rural waterways seriously polluted by fertiliser runoff. In fact, France is often, though perhaps unfairly, considered to be in the slow-to-middle lane among OECD partners when it comes to some environmental standards and public attitudes to poor environmental practices. But that is changing and there are increasing signs that the environment is looming ever larger in people’s preoccupations and public debate.

French citizens have believed for some time that their health care system, while perhaps costly, is among the best in the world. But when the World Health Organisation (WHO) released its official rankings in June, the French found out just how privileged they are.

This is the third economic revolution France is undergoing in less than fifty years. The first one took place in the Fifties and the Sixties, and was about modernisation. Admittedly, France had been a very rich and innovating industrial country, second only to the United Kingdom, since the very beginning of the 19th century. But then, during the first half of the 20th century, it had been bypassed by newcomers like the United States, Germany and even Italy, Russia and Japan – a factor that, along with a weak demography, contributed in no small measure to the ignominious defeat of 1940. Post-War France made economic recovery and reindustrialisation a top priority – and succeeded in an amazing way.