"Why the French are the Worst Company on the Planet" is the title of a recently published report, the authors of which asked other Europeans what they thought of the French people. The response was terrible, writes Kevin Myers
The Germans think the French are pretentious, frivolous and "offhand" (whatever that may mean), the Dutch that they are talkative, shallow and "agitated", the Spanish that they are cold, distant, vain and impolite. The Italians regard the French as snobs, arrogant, righteous, self-obsessed and "flesh-loving". The Greeks thought them egocentric bons viveurs. And the Swedes say that the French are disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty.
All of which raises the question: how did the people polled agree to such a varied and improbable selection of adjectives? For these are not truths, but recycled clichés from people who have never been in France, or perhaps in their entire lifetimes, have met just the one Frenchman a moment after some fellow countrymen of theirs had picked his pocket, urinated in his face, engaged in group sex with his wife and his adult daughters, and then - le glace sur le gateau - his mother also.
So, the real truth about such surveys is that they are useless in every respect, except one: how they are regarded by the people who are the subject of them. The French seem to have welcomed the apparently low estimation others have of them, perhaps because they are in that part of the national cycle which all countries go through, in which anguished self-doubt and even self-loathing become social norms: as in Ireland 20 years ago, or Britain 30 years ago, or the US 40 years ago.
France is in a mess because the previous Socialist government has made it that way. Fly Ryanair to Beauvais airport, hire a car, and return it on a Sunday.
You'll do so with an empty tank because the 35-hour working week means that all the petrol stations are shut on the Sabbath. French trade unions have indoctrinated their members in the folly of rights and idiotic restrictive practices, just as trade unions in this country once did.
"Rights" culture is the companion of poverty and the handmaiden of recession: it protects the right to curb growth, to limit flexibility and to keep trade union officials in permanent employment. In the quagmire which results, it is easy to believe the left-wing mantras about the diabolical bosses and the need to protect workers' rights, just as union officials in this country used to do, even as our young people caught the ferry to find work in Thatcher's Britain, (not being able to afford the air fares charged by the State-owned, trade union closed-shop horror story that was Aer Lingus).
Poor France is in that part of the cycle now, and it is baffled as to how to get out of it: there are more French people working in London than in Lyons, and two million Britons own homes in France. Is it any wonder that in compensation, the French proudly compare their national health and welfare systems favourably with those of the British, though these are amongst the very reasons why their economy has now been struggling for an entire generation? Before the arrival of the IMF inspectors to rattle his cage, Charles Haughey used to make similarly witless boastful comparisons between our welfare provisions and those of the UK. This is the equivalent of the crew of an already floundering lifeboat in high seas proudly overloading it with more sailors.
The French are in the middle of an incomprehensible debate over the EU Constitution, in which - as far as I can see, which isn't exactly to the moon - its opponents - such as the unspeakable Jean-Marie Le Pen - argue that if the French people say Yes, France will be subordinate to a British-dominated EU; and its supporters argue in favour of the constitution so that France should be in no way like Britain. No, I don't understand it either.
But I do hope the French vote No, not just to the constitution, but to the growth of that vast and insidious Eurocracy emanating out of Brussels. This is the gravest enemy of a prosperous Europe, with its army of civil servants imposing mountains of regulations which no democratically elected politician has ever approved, and only about three Mekons in their Commissions even begin to understand. (If you don't know what a Mekon is, pity.)
Such Mekons came up with the 48-hour working week restriction, in which it is actually illegal for an employee freely to work a regular 50-hour week. Has anyone remotely tried to explain - never mind enforce - this barmy law on the Chinese, who are genetically incapable of working less than 12 hours a day? No, I didn't think so. However, once we submit to the EU Constitution, how long before the Mekons' inspectors raid Chinese restaurants in order to decode work-dockets written in Mandarin to see how many waiters are working 50-hour weeks?
The French will come through their cycle of depression as we once did, and in the same way: by ending statism, compulsory trade unionism, and that terminal disease, "rights". But regardless of all that, the French have never conformed to the negative stereotypes painted either by their enemies or by people who don't know them. Provided you try to speak their language - and it doesn't have to be either very much or very good - the French are, unfailingly, very friendly, very helpful and very welcoming. And as for France? Still and always, the most wonderful country in the world.