Next year, milllions of French people may enjoy the novelty of buying groceries on Sunday but if the experience of pushing trolleys down crowded aisles causes a headache they still won't be able to pick up a pack of aspirin.
France's Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron this week table his long-awaited reform bill – a grab bag of measures intended to inject a bit of zip into the floundering French economy. These include a loosening of the restrictions on Sunday trading: supermarkets will be able to open their doors for 12 Sundays each year, up from five currently. Certain protected professions, including notaries and bailiffs will be subject to greater competition and France will open the market to long-distance bus and coach travel, effectively ending the rail monopoly.
If these sound like very minor concessions to economic freedom, it is a measure of the gargantuan political task facing any French government that seeks to loosen the iron grip of the state on the economy. Hopes that the Socialist government of Manuel Valls would roll back the 35-hour week, a major bugbear of French employers, have been dashed and even French pharmacists have been able to stem the tide of reform; they retain their absolute monopoly on the sale of medicines, even over-the-counter painkillers.
Still, the French may find it easier to get around their country in future. The Macron bill will remove piles of red tape that prevent private companies from operating bus services. The prohibition has had the effect of preventing competition to the French railway network which offers speedy but expensive travel between Paris and the provinces. Anyone seeking to travel between provincial cities and off the high-speed networks is stuck without a car; it is yet another way in which the French government has subjugated economic development to a centralizing diktat from Paris.
The reforming zeal of Mr. Macron is already threatened by rear-guard action from his party where deputies are threatening to emasculate even his gentle attempts to open up shops on Sunday. If they succeed in sabotaging his bill when it reaches parliament in January, the repercussions could be severe. The European Commission has given France a few months grace to take measures to reduce its fiscal deficit and while the "Loi Macron" will do nothing to cut France's public sector borrowing, it is expected to give Brussels a signal that the country is on the right track.
For Prime Minister Valls, that means nothing less than ridding the French Socialist party of its addiction to the command economy and its nostalgic navel-gazing at the past. For French Socialists, the model to which they would like the country to be restored is the period from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1970s. Known affectionately as the "trente glorieuses," it was a period of rapid growth, fuelled by Marshall Plan aid (of which France was the second-largest recipient) and industrialization when the French economy expanded at an average rate of 5 per cent.
It was also fuelled (like other European nations) by a baby boom and more particularly in France by a massive shift in the labour force from toiling on the land to work in factories and in the service sector. It was during this period that France built its motor industry, the aerospace sector, nuclear power and high-speed rail. It also built its welfare state and the notion of acquired rights that haunts any politician who tries to question the sustainability of the state cushion in a low-growth economy.
Sadly, the nostalgic vision of the French Socialist is focused on "grands projets," not the everyday world of small businesses and entrepreneurship which sustains small towns and communities. Consider the traditional French artisanal bakery which is in serious danger of disappearing from the life of small French towns, under pressure from high costs, regulation and the competitive pressure from supermarkets.
The region of Aquitaine has lost a third of its artisanal bakers over the past decade. From an outside perspective, it seems unfortunate that the French government is more concerned to protect the privileges of pharmacists than the survival of the local boulanger-pâtissier. Even if you can't find a decent croissant to accompany your morning cafe au lait, at least a professional pharmacist can supply you with anti-depressants.
Carl Mortished