ECONOMY – The Strategic State in Europe and France Since China’s Accession to the WTO (2001–2026)Reindustrialisation, Competitiveness, Economic Sovereignty and Public Sector Effectiveness
Par François Souty, PhD
François Souty, PhD in Economic History, former International Affairs Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (2021-2024), was a member of the OECD Committee of Experts on Competition Policy from 1996 to 2024. He teaches European institutions and geopolitics at the Excelia Business School group (La Rochelle-Paris Cachan) as well as European competition law and policy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Nantes. He is in charge of the economics section at Le Diplomate Media.
« To increase one’s strength to the extent of one’s designs, not to expect from chance or formulas what one neglects to prepare, to proportion the stakes and the means: the action of peoples, like that of individuals, is subject to these cold rules. Inexorable, they do not allow themselves to be swayed either by the finest causes or by the most generous principles. »
Charles de Gaulle, La France et son armée, Paris, Plon, 1938
Executive Summary
This study draws lessons from the careful observation of the industrial policies of China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India since 2001, published by us since January 2026. Indeed, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001 profoundly transformed the world economy. It marked the return of strategic states, capable of simultaneously using industrial policy, innovation, finance, public procurement, regulation and the mastery of critical technologies as instruments of economic power. Over the past twenty-five years, the main industrial powers have adapted their strategies: China through an integrated long-term industrial policy, the United States through a massive return to strategic intervention in critical technologies, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan through the consolidation of their industrial and technological ecosystems, and India through a policy of accelerated industrialization and economic simplification.
The European Union has only gradually become aware of this new reality, reacting weakly. The notions of strategic autonomy, economic security and technological sovereignty have finally acquired a central place in European policies, but only in the last two or three years. Successive reports on European competitiveness, in particular Mario Draghi’s report in 2024 and its follow-up, have confirmed the urgency of a new direction. However, this development comes with a delay as the gap with the main industrial powers has already widened in several strategic sectors.
The French situation presents particular difficulties, even if France fortunately retains major assets: the quality of its research, the excellence of its numerous training courses, high-performance infrastructures, innovative companies and recognised industrial know-how. But these forces are weakened by long-term deindustrialization, a loss of relative competitiveness, very excessive administrative complexity, difficulty in carrying out major projects quickly, a significant loss of efficiency in the education system, a worrying slowdown in the health protection system and an insufficient culture of public policy evaluation. The French problem is not only that of the level of public intervention; it is that of its effectiveness, its coherence and its ability to prepare for the future.
The comparative analysis of strategic states leads to going beyond the traditional opposition between more and less states. Foreign experiences show that the most successful states are not necessarily those that intervene the most, but those that know how to define long-term priorities, concentrate their resources, coordinate their public policies and measure their results. The strategic state is not the one that intervenes or possesses the most; it is the one that best prepares for the future by concentrating its resources on a limited number of priorities that are constantly evaluated.
The reconstruction of a European and French strategic state is thus based on several essential orientations: restoring a long-term industrial vision, selecting priority sectors, adapting competition policy to the realities of global competition, simplifying the regulatory environment, speeding up public decisions, mobilising more private and public capital towards productive investment, strengthening energy sovereignty, etc. digital and technological technologies, and put human skills back at the heart of the economic strategy. This transformation also implies an increased demand for budgetary efficiency. The sustainable recovery of public finances is a necessary condition for regaining policy space for investment, innovation, industry and strategic infrastructure. Any important public policy must now be assessed in the light of its objectives, its costs, its results and its contribution to the economic, technological and strategic interests of the Nation and the European Union.
The challenge of the next few years therefore goes beyond the industrial question alone. It concerns the ability of Europe and France to once again become spaces of production, innovation and decision-making in a world marked by competition between powers. The priority is not to rebuild the state of the past, but to build a strategic state fit for the twenty-first century: a state capable of anticipating, choosing, investing, evaluating and creating the conditions for sustainable prosperity.
Introduction
The accession of the People’s Republic of China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 11 December 2001 was one of the major economic and geopolitical turning points of the beginning of the twenty-first century. It does not only mark the integration of a new major player in world trade; It inaugurates a new phase of globalization characterized by the return of public power to the definition of national economic strategies. Since then, international competition is no longer based solely on the ability of companies to conquer markets, but also on the ability of states to organize their industrial, technological, financial and scientific ecosystems in order to strengthen their competitiveness and sovereignty.
The Chinese experience has profoundly transformed the conditions of global competition. By combining strategic planning, industrial policy, financial support, control of critical technologies, development of global national enterprises and progressive control of value chains, China has demonstrated that a state can simultaneously use economic, legal and technological instruments as levers of power. This development has led the other great powers to review their own doctrines. The United States has embarked on a massive return to industrial policy around critical technologies, reindustrialization and economic security. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have strengthened their industrial and technological resilience strategies. Finally, India has embarked on a profound transformation of its economic environment in order to accelerate its industrialization and its integration into the new global value chains.[1]
These developments reflect a major paradigm shift. The most efficient economies are no longer those that abandon their development entirely to market mechanisms alone, nor are those where the state replaces companies in the long term. They are the ones that manage to organize an effective complementarity between private initiative, innovation, investment and strategic public action.
The European Union has gradually become aware of this new reality. After a long period during which Community economic policy has given priority to the deepening of the internal market, competition and trade opening, the notions of strategic autonomy, economic security and technological sovereignty now occupy a central place in the European debate. Initiatives relating to semiconductors, low-carbon technologies, critical raw materials, defence and artificial intelligence demonstrate a new desire to respond to the changes in the international environment.
However, this awareness remains late in view of the changes undertaken over more than two decades by the main industrial powers. Mario Draghi’s report in 2024 on the future of European competitiveness, followed by its follow-up in 2025, was a major step forward in highlighting the urgency of a new European economic strategy. The analysis devoted in December 2025 to the French version of these recommendations is part of this broader reflection on the conditions of France’s productive, technological and institutional recovery.
Because the French situation has particular characteristics. France retains considerable assets: recognized scientific research, excellent training, quality infrastructure, innovative companies and leading industrial know-how in several strategic sectors. But these forces are weakened by a marked industrial decline, a loss of relative competitiveness, increasing administrative complexity, difficulties in carrying out major projects quickly and an insufficient evaluation of public policies. The French problem is therefore not only that of the level of public intervention; it is that of its effectiveness, its coherence and its ability to prepare for the future.
This question is in line with a long French tradition of reflection on the modernization of the state and the economy. From the Rueff-Armand Report of 1960 to the Nora Report of 1967, from the Gallois Report of 2012 to the European Draghi Report of 2024-2025, the same concern emerges: at different times, how can public institutions be adapted to the profound transformations of the global economy in order to preserve a nation’s capacity for production, innovation and sovereignty?[2]
Comparative experiences, however, lead us to go beyond the traditional opposition between more and less government. They show that the essential issue lies less in the size of the state than in its strategic capacity. The States that achieve the best results are not necessarily those that intervene the most, but those that know how to set clear priorities, concentrate their resources, coordinate their policies and measure their results.[3]
It should be stressed that the strategic state is not the one that intervenes the most; it is the one that best prepares for the future by concentrating its resources on a limited number of priorities that are constantly evaluated. Raymond Barre had already summed up this conception of the state with a formula: « modest state, guarantor state », which does not mean its disappearance, as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India successfully demonstrate in the results.
This definition is the guiding principle of this reflection. It leads us to examine the policies pursued since 2001 by the main industrial powers, not as models to be reproduced mechanically, but as experiments that make it possible to identify the conditions for effective public action in an environment marked by technological, industrial and geopolitical competition. The objective is thus to identify the principles of a renewed European strategic state and to draw the consequences for France: how to restore competitiveness, strengthen economic sovereignty and create the conditions for sustainable prosperity in the twenty-first century?
I. The global return of strategic states and the belated awakening of Europe
China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001 is not only a change in the scale of international trade. It marks a break in the very conception of economic power. The globalization that has developed since the 1980s has been largely based on the idea of international specialization based on comparative advantages, trade openness and the optimization of value chains. This organization has enabled a strong growth in world trade, but it has also gradually revealed its fragilities: industrial dependencies, technological vulnerabilities, geographical concentration of certain strategic productions and increased exposure to geopolitical power relations.
Over the past twenty-five years, the main economic powers have therefore gradually reintroduced a strategic dimension into their public policies. Industrial policy, long considered in several Western economies as an instrument of the past, has once again become a major tool for competitiveness, economic security and sovereignty. This development does not mean a return to the administered economies of the twentieth century. Rather, it reflects the emergence of a new model in which the state sets long-term directions, supports critical sectors, organizes innovation ecosystems, and creates the conditions for national firms to compete in a more conflictual global environment.
Our detailed comparative analysis of China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India makes it possible to identify the main characteristics of these new strategic states. First, it shows how China has profoundly transformed the rules of global competition by combining trade openness and national power strategy. It then makes it possible to understand how the main industrial economies have adapted their own instruments in order to preserve their productive and technological capacities. Finally, it highlights the European gap: even as the other major powers reorganised their industrial strategies, the European Union remained largely attached to the intellectual and regulatory frameworks inherited from the 1990s.
A. China’s entry into the WTO: the shift towards strategic globalization
China’s accession to the World Trade Organization on 11 December 2001 was a major event in contemporary economic history. It enshrines the integration of a country of more than one billion inhabitants into the multilateral trading system and accelerates a profound transformation of global industrial balances. Within a few years, China became the world’s central manufacturing workshop, changing the geography of value chains and putting considerable pressure on the traditional industries of developed economies.[4]
However, reducing this transformation to a mere phenomenon of competitiveness based on wage costs would be insufficient. China’s uniqueness lies in the link between opening up to international trade and maintaining the state’s strategic capacity. Contrary to the idea of gradual integration into a liberal economic order that naturally leads to institutional convergence, China uses its accession to the WTO as a lever to accelerate its industrial modernization while maintaining tight control over the essential directions of its economic development.[5]
Since the 2000s, the Chinese authorities have been pursuing several simultaneous objectives: to attract foreign investment in order to acquire technologies and skills, to develop a complete national industrial base, to promote the emergence of national champions and to gradually move up the value chains towards more technology-intensive sectors.[6] This strategy is based on an original combination of international openness and public intervention: special economic zones, targeted bank financing, infrastructure support, research policies, public procurement and support for strategic companies.
The global financial crisis of 2008 further accelerated this development. Beijing’s massive stimulus package, announced to be worth 4 trillion yuan, confirms the central role of the state in economic stabilization and directing investment towards infrastructure, industry and emerging technologies.[7] This period also marks a change in ambition: China is no longer just about being the world’s factory, but about becoming a dominant player in the technologies of the future.
This orientation finds its clearest expression with the launch of the Made in China 2025 program in 2015. Inspired by the industrial strategies carried out in Germany, Japan and South Korea, this programme aims to strengthen China’s position in ten sectors considered strategic: semiconductors, artificial intelligence, robotics, electric vehicles, aeronautics, biotechnologies and new materials.[8] It reflects a major evolution: international competition is no longer only about production capacity, but about the mastery of the critical technologies that will determine future economic power.
This rise in industrial power is accompanied by a broader reflection on economic security. China’s « dual circulation » strategy, formulated from 2020, aims to simultaneously strengthen China’s domestic market and the country’s ability to control its external dependencies in key sectors.[9] It illustrates a trend that is now global: the search for a balance between economic openness and the protection of national strategic capabilities.
Thus, the Chinese experience since 2001 does not correspond to a simple return of the state to the economy. It reveals the emergence of a new type of strategic state, capable of using all available instruments — industrial, financial, technological, commercial and regulatory — in order to pursue long-term objectives. It is this transformation that is gradually leading the other major powers to revise their own economic policies.
B. The responses of the major industrial powers: the gradual reconstruction of strategic states
The transformation of the Chinese model since its entry into the WTO has not only changed the global economic balance; it has forced the other major industrial powers to re-examine their own economic doctrines. After a period dominated by the idea that globalization was gradually making national industrial policies secondary, the major developed and emerging economies have embarked on a profound reassessment of the role of the state.
This evolution does not correspond to a return to the dirigiste industrial policies of the twentieth century. Rather, it reflects the emergence of a new generation of strategic states, based on a few common principles: identification of critical sectors, support for innovation, securing value chains, mobilization of public and private capital, skills development and coordination between administrations, businesses and research.[10]
The United States was one of the first Western countries to make this change in doctrine. After several decades of prioritizing financialization, the global optimization of production chains and the reduction of the direct economic role of the federal government, Washington has gradually put industrial power back at the heart of its strategy. Technological rivalry with China has accelerated this development, particularly in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and defence technologies.[11]
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and the Inflation Reduction Act of the same year illustrate this assumed return of an American industrial policy. The first aims to rebuild a national semiconductor production capacity and reduce critical dependencies; the second uses public credits, tax incentives and public procurement to accelerate the energy transition while promoting industrial relocation.[12] This strategy is based less on the substitution of the state for companies than on the creation of an environment that allows private actors to invest in sectors deemed essential to American power.
Japan is another particularly instructive example. After the bursting of its financial bubble in the early 1990s and a long period of stagnation, Tokyo gradually reinvented its model of a strategic state. Contemporary Japanese industrial policy is no longer based solely on the traditional sectoral planning of the MITI, but on close coordination between the administration, companies, research and territories. The Society 5.0 strategy,support for semiconductors, investments in artificial intelligence and the Rapidus national foundry project bear witness to this new orientation.[13]
South Korea probably offers the most successful example of an industrial strategy built over time. Since the 1960s, the Korean state has supported the rise of large industrial groups (chaebols) while directing investments towards sectors considered strategic. Since 2001, this strategy has shifted to cutting-edge technologies: semiconductors, batteries, electric vehicles, biotechnology and digital. The Korean state acts less as a direct producer than as the coordinator of an ecosystem involving large groups, universities and research institutes.[14]
Taiwan also illustrates a particularly effective form of specialized strategic state. Its model is based on a close articulation between public policy, applied research and private companies, the best known example of which is that of semiconductors. The rise of Taiwan’s chip industry is not the spontaneous result of the global market: it is the result of a progressive strategy combining public research, engineering training, technological infrastructure and institutional support for innovative companies.[15]
Finally, since the early 2010s, India has embarked on an original transformation. In contrast to Asian models that have historically been based on strong administrative coordination, New Delhi is more focused on improving the overall business environment: regulatory simplification, digitalization of administration, infrastructure development, attracting foreign investment, and targeted support for strategic sectors. The Make in India, Production Linked Incentives (PLI) and investments in digital infrastructure illustrate this desire to combine international openness with national capacity building.[16]
These national experiences are very different, but they reveal the same fundamental evolution. Since 2001, the most successful states have not been those that systematically oppose the market and public intervention. They are the ones who know how to organize an effective complementarity between private initiative and public strategy. What they have in common is their ability to anticipate technological transformations, to concentrate their resources on a few priorities and to maintain political continuity beyond electoral cycles.
It is precisely this dimension that explains the European gap. While the main powers were gradually adapting their economic instruments to the new realities of global competition, the European Union remained largely attached to a model favouring openness, competition and regulation, without yet having a real common industrial strategy. As far as France is concerned, the table in Appendix 2 on the major French reports on State reform and competitiveness (1963-2025) shows that diagnoses have existed for a long time but that their implementation has been totally insufficient.
C. Europe’s backwardness: from the regulatory state to the belated search for a strategic state
The transformation of world capitalism since 2001 highlights a major contrast between the evolution of the main economic powers and the European trajectory. While China, the United States and the major Asian economies were gradually reintroducing strategic objectives into their economic policies, the European Union remained largely organised around an institutional model built in the 1980s and 1990s: that of a power mainly based on trade openness, integration of the internal market, competition and regulation.
This model has undoubtedly produced important results. The construction of Europe has made it possible to establish one of the largest integrated economic areas in the world, to ensure a high movement of goods, capital and skills, and to guarantee a stable legal framework favourable to investment. European competition policy has helped to limit certain excessive concentrations and to preserve the open functioning of the markets.[17] Nevertheless, this policy raises many questions. It can even thwart the ability of European companies to develop optimally or to resist the pressures of American, Chinese and even other Asian countries.
However, this institutional framework, designed mainly to correct the excesses of private economic power in a relatively cooperative international environment, has gradually proved insufficient in the face of the return of competition between powers. The European Union has long considered that the best strategy is to create the general conditions for an efficient market, without necessarily defining common industrial priorities comparable to those developed in Asia or, more recently, in the United States.[18]
This approach has produced a paradox. Europe remains a major trading power, but it has gradually lost dominant positions in several decisive sectors of the new global economy: digital, technology platforms, artificial intelligence, batteries, semiconductors, cloud, certain defence industries or emerging technologies. It has global companies in several sectors, but is struggling to develop ecosystems capable of competing with the major American and Asian hubs in disruptive industries.[19]
This difficulty is partly due to European institutional fragmentation. The internal market is a considerable strength, but it remains incomplete in several key areas: capital markets, energy, digital, innovation financing or industrial policy. European companies benefit from a large commercial area, but face more difficulties in quickly reaching global size and suffer from a chronic shortage of capital or financing that would justify a change or transformation of the financial markets associated with the achievement of economies of scale of a continental nature, as explained in the Letta report.[20] But this question of the financial markets does not need to be debated at the political or electoral level because of its great complexity and its lack of competitiveness.[21]
This fragmentation is compounded by a regulatory culture that, while meeting legitimate objectives of consumer protection, the environment or financial stability, has sometimes contributed to slowing down innovation and investment. The contemporary European debate is therefore no longer about the necessary existence of common rules, but about their proportionality, their simplicity and their compatibility with the requirements of global competition.[22]
The 2024 Draghi Report highlighted precisely this European contradiction: the Union has considerable human, scientific and industrial capital, but suffers from an investment gap, a lag in some critical technologies and a difficulty in transforming its scientific capabilities into global companies.[23] The report thus calls for going beyond the traditional model of « regulatory power » to build a real European strategic capacity.
However, this evolution implies a profound cultural change. The challenge is not to abandon the achievements of the internal market or to call into question the essential role of competition. It consists in recognising that the current global competition also opposes national and regional ecosystems that often benefit from massive public support. The European Union must therefore be able to combine competitive discipline, targeted support for strategic sectors and coordinated mobilisation of public and private investment.
Several recent initiatives bear witness to this evolution: the European Chips Act, the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI), the new instruments relating to critical raw materials and the reflections on a more integrated European industrial policy.[24] However, these instruments are still partial and do not always constitute a genuinely coherent industrial strategy comparable to the approaches developed by the major competing powers.
Thus, the main lesson of the period 2001-2025 is clear: the European Union has not ignored the transformation of the world, but it has long apprehended it with instruments designed for a different era. The current challenge is therefore to move from a logic mainly based on market regulation to a logic of active economic transformation, without renouncing the fundamental principles that have built the European model. In other words, Europe must now answer a central question: how to become a strategic power without renouncing its legal, economic and political identity? Is this even possible? It is this question that constitutes the heart of the developments devoted to the conditions for the reconstruction of a European and French strategic state.
The transformation of world capitalism since 2001 does not therefore lead to an artificial opposition between the state and the market, but to a rethinking of the conditions for a sustainable economic power. The major economies that have maintained or strengthened their international position are those that have been able to build instruments to guide investment, support innovation and secure their industrial capacities. The European Union has now begun this evolution, but with a delay that raises a more specific question: why has France, despite its exceptional assets, experienced a more marked industrial and economic decline than several of its European partners? It is this French singularity that must now be analyzed.
Box 1
Birth of the new strategic state: the recomposition of the Chinese industrial state since 2001,
From the workshop of the world to technological power
China’s entry into the World Trade Organization on December 11, 2001, was a major turning point in contemporary economic history. It has often been interpreted as the culmination of China’s gradual integration into the global liberal economic order. However, this reading is incomplete. While accession to the WTO has accelerated China’s trade opening-up, it has also provided the Beijing authorities with exceptional leverage to transform the national production structure and engage in a strategy of industrial ramp-up.
China’s uniqueness lies in the combination of two apparently contradictory dynamics: openness to the mechanisms of globalization and the maintenance of the state’s strategic capacity to guide economic transformations.
1. 2001-2008: Use globalization to build a complete industrial base. In the first phase after WTO accession, China is taking full advantage of its comparative advantages: an abundance of labour, growing manufacturing capacities, rapid infrastructure development and attractiveness for foreign direct investment.
But this integration into global value chains does not correspond to a simple specialization in low-cost production. The Chinese authorities are using foreign investment, technology transfer, joint ventures and training policies to gradually build national capacity. The objective is not only to export more, but to acquire the skills to gradually move up to the higher value-added segments.
2. After 2008: the affirmation of a coordinating industrial state. The global financial crisis of 2008 accelerated the transformation of the Chinese model. The massive stimulus package adopted by Beijing confirms the state’s ability to rapidly mobilize considerable financial resources in the service of strategic economic objectives.
This period marked an important evolution: China no longer sought only to be the world’s factory; It wants to master the infrastructure, technologies and industries that will determine future economic power. Public policies then combine oriented bank financing, support for national companies, investments in research, public procurement and the development of digital infrastructures.
The Chinese state acts less as a direct producer than as an organizer of complete industrial ecosystems.
3. 2015: from manufacturing power to technological ambition. The Made in China 2025 program, launched in 2015, is a milestone. It officially reflects the objective of transforming China into a leading industrial and technological power.
The sectors identified as priorities — semiconductors, robotics, artificial intelligence, aeronautics, electric vehicles, new materials, biotechnology or advanced industrial equipment — correspond to the areas considered essential for competitiveness and economic sovereignty in the twenty-first century.
This strategy reveals a change in the nature of China’s industrial policy: the objective is no longer just to produce more, but to master critical technologies and strategic value chains.
4. Since 2020: economic security at the heart of China’s strategy. The « dual circulation » strategy, formulated from 2020 onwards, deepens this development. It aims to simultaneously strengthen China’s domestic market and the country’s ability to reduce its external dependencies in areas considered sensitive.
This orientation is in line with a now global trend: international competition is no longer just about trade, but about the mastery of technologies, data, critical resources, industrial capabilities and essential infrastructure.
A central lesson for the other powers. The main Chinese lesson since 2001 is therefore not the return of a producing state replacing the market. It lies in the emergence of a strategic state capable of defining long-term priorities, coordinating public and private actors, mobilizing the necessary funding and organizing the country’s technological upgrade.
It is precisely this development that has led the other major industrial powers — the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India — to re-examine their own industrial policy instruments.
Source: François Souty, « The recomposition of the Chinese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2025) », op.cit.
II. The French dropout: the causes of a loss of industrial and strategic competitiveness
The comparative analysis of the great powers shows that the return of the strategic state is not an ideological phenomenon, but a pragmatic response to the transformations of the world economy. However, the European question cannot be reduced to a simple collective delay. There are significant differences in national trajectories within the Union. Some countries have been more resilient to the industrial and technological upheavals of the past twenty-five years, while others have suffered a more marked decline in their productive apparatus.
The French situation appears, in this respect, to be singular. France remains a major global economy, with high-performance companies in several strategic sectors, recognized scientific research, quality infrastructure and a significant capacity for innovation. However, since the early 2000s, it has experienced a gradual erosion of its industrial base, a deterioration in its relative competitiveness and an increasing difficulty in transforming its scientific and technological assets into sustainable economic advantages.
This stall is not the result of a single cause. It is the result of a set of mutually reinforcing factors: insufficient anticipation of the transformations of globalisation, loss of industrial competitiveness, regulatory complexity, difficulties in the functioning of public action, relative weakness in the financing of certain innovations, insufficient culture of evaluation and lack of continuity in several strategic policies.
The objective of this part is not to establish an indictment against French public action since 2001. Several policies have produced positive results: support for certain sectors of the future, development of digital infrastructure, creation of centres of scientific excellence, maintenance of industrial capacities in essential areas. But the general observation remains: France has not sufficiently adapted its economic, administrative and industrial model to the new phase of global competition that has opened up since China’s entry into the WTO.
The analysis must therefore distinguish between three complementary dimensions. The first concerns the evolution of the French productive apparatus and deindustrialization. The second concerns the limits of the French administrative and regulatory model. The third examines the strategic choices, particularly in the energy, technological and budgetary areas, which have reduced certain national room for manoeuvre.
A. French deindustrialization: a gradual disengagement in the face of changes in the world economy
French deindustrialization is one of the major economic phenomena of the last twenty-five years. Between the early 2000s and the mid-2020s, France saw a significant decline in the role of industry in its economy, both in terms of employment and contribution to value added. This development is not unique to France: many Western economies have experienced a reduction in their manufacturing base as a result of globalization, productivity gains, and the shift of some production to emerging countries. However, the scale of the French phenomenon appears to be greater than that observed in several European partners, notably Germany or certain Central European countries.[25]
The problem is not that a modern economy can reduce some traditional industrial activities. Technological transformations necessarily lead to sectoral restructuring. France’s difficulty lies more in the insufficient capacity to quickly renew its productive fabric towards high value-added sectors, critical technologies and new value chains. This difficulty is also due to the fact that France is now experiencing one of the most marked deindustrializations among the major European economies.
Table 1: Share of manufacturing industry in GDP (%, 2001-2024)
| Country | 2001 | 2010 | 2024 |
| China | ~32% | ~31% | ~27% |
| Taiwan | ~27% | ~30% | ~33% |
| South Korea | ~28% | ~30% | ~26% |
| Japan | ~22% | ~20% | ~19% |
| Germany | ~22% | ~22% | ~19% |
| India | ~15% | ~16% | ~17% |
| Italy | ~19% | ~17% | ~15% |
| European Union (27) | ~18% | ~15% | ~14% |
| Spain | ~16% | ~13% | ~12% |
| France | ~16% | ~12% | ~10% |
In the early 2000s, France had a significant industrial base in several sectors: aeronautics, nuclear, defence, railways, automotive, pharmaceuticals, agri-food, industrial equipment and infrastructure. But unlike some countries that have actively supported the move upmarket of their industry, France has often favoured a gradual adaptation based on cost competitiveness, restructuring and internal productivity gains, without always developing a sufficiently offensive strategy to conquer new technological markets.[26] Taiwan has even managed to increase its industrial base in the same period, while Japan, South Korea – Germany and Italy – have lost only two or three points. The tables in appendices 3 and 4, which are much more developed, are even more edifying.
The contrast with Germany is particularly revealing. German industry has also been affected by globalisation, but it has retained a stronger manufacturing base thanks to a specific positioning: specialisation in capital goods, strong integration of industrial SMEs (Mittelstand), proximity between applied research and business, developed vocational training and global export capacity.[27] France has suffered more from a break between research, industry and the financing of growth. It produces excellent researchers and engineers, but faces more difficulties in transforming these skills into world-class industrial companies. This weakness in the transition from innovation to industrialization is one of the major handicaps of the French model.[28]
The loss of industrial capacity is not only an economic issue. It also affects national sovereignty. The successive crises since 2020 — pandemic, energy tensions, Sino-American technological rivalries, war in Ukraine — have reminded us that excessive dependence on external value chains can become a factor of strategic vulnerability.[29]
The recent reindustrialization movement that has been underway for several years is a positive development. Investment support schemes, the France 2030 plan and European policies in critical sectors show an increase in awareness.[30] But the challenge is no longer just to support a few emblematic industrial projects: it is to sustainably rebuild an environment favourable to production, investment and innovation. The central question then became that of the ability of the French state to move from a logic of compensation for industrial losses to a real strategy of productive reconquest: this will have to be dealt with during the debates for the 2027 presidential election, if the debates are not confiscated by artificial ideological quarrels of which the French political class – especially, on the left – has the secret.
B. A French State that is too administrative and insufficiently strategic: the cost of complexity, dispersion and a weak culture of results
The question of the role of the State is one of the most sensitive points in the French debate. The French state has clearly, totally, left aside the need to recompose its industrial policy, in the image of the considerable work carried out by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India to meet the challenges of the impact of China’s irruption on world markets from 2001 onwards. For several decades, successive criticisms have often oscillated between two opposing visions: for some, France suffers from an excess of public intervention that hinders private initiative; for others, on the contrary, it needs a more present state to protect its economic and social model. However, this opposition masks the main issue revealed by the international comparison: the decisive question for France is not the quantity of the state, but its strategic capacity.
The experiences of China, the United States, Japan, Korea and Taiwan show that the most successful states are not those that withdraw from the economy. They are the ones who know how to identify priority sectors, concentrate their resources, coordinate their actors and constantly evaluate the results obtained. Conversely, a state may have large administrations, large budgets and considerable regulatory capacity while experiencing difficulties in directing its economy in the long term.
In this respect, France presents a paradoxical situation. It retains a high-level administrative tradition, stemming in particular from the construction of the modern state, post-war planning and the action of the major technical bodies. This capacity has led to major successes: economic reconstruction after 1945, the development of civil nuclear power, major industrial, aeronautics, space programmes, transport and defence infrastructure, the development of high-performance education and research, the health system admired by all our neighbours, etc.[31]
But this administrative tradition was carried by a generation forged in resistance and the vital need to constantly adapt in order to survive. This was a strength in an economy of reconstruction and major national projects, but today this tradition shows certain limits in an environment characterized by rapid innovation, technological competition and the need for a permanent adaptation of a new, more technocratic generation, not used to questioning itself. The risk is then to have a State that is very present in the definition of rules but less effective in achieving strategic objectives.
This tension had already been identified by several major French reports. The Rueff-Armand report of 1960, which so powerfully inspired General de Gaulle’s industrial policy, stressed the need to remove the obstacles that limited economic expansion. The Bloch-Lainé report of 1963 also raised the essential question of adapting administrative structures to the new requirements of management and responsibility. The Nora Report of 1967 insisted on the modernization of the management of public enterprises and on the need for greater economic efficiency of public action. [32]
More than sixty years later, these needs and this question remain highly topical. France has an administration capable of producing complex standards and detailed procedures. But it often struggles to distinguish between what is a legitimate protection of the general interest and what constitutes an unnecessary obstacle to economic initiative. This difficulty is particularly visible in industrial sectors where speed of decision making is becoming a determining factor in competitiveness.
The accumulation of norms is therefore a major issue. French companies, especially SMEs and intermediate industrial companies, often have to devote significant resources to administrative, regulatory and tax compliance, which all business leaders have been constantly complaining about for at least two decades, at least since 2001, the pivotal date at the origin of this article and the series it is ending. This situation is not only linked to European law; It is also largely the result of national practices of transposition and over-regulation which add additional constraints to the common obligations that many officials in the most Europeanised sectors of activity (agriculture in particular) complain about.[33]
The problem is not the norm itself. An advanced economy needs clear rules to protect safety, the environment, consumers and even competitive dynamics. But an effective public policy presupposes a hierarchy of objectives. When the production of standards becomes faster than the evaluation of their economic effects, the state risks reducing its own capacity for strategic action: China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have strongly adapted their competition policies to the new operating conditions of strategic states.
This question is directly related to that of the evaluation of public policies. Strategic states that have managed to maintain their competitiveness share a common characteristic: they experiment, measure, correct and quickly abandon ineffective systems. Conversely, France continues to have a tendency to multiply public measures without always carrying out a sufficiently rigorous evaluation of their real effectiveness.[34]
This weakness of the results-oriented culture contributes to a dispersion of resources. The French state intervenes in many areas, but sometimes struggles to clearly prioritize its priorities. However, the current global competition imposes choices. No country can be a world leader in all technology sectors at the same time; Effective industrial strategies are based precisely on the concentration of resources on a limited number of areas where there are comparative advantages or major strategic interests.
The Draghi report insisted on this need at the European level: in the face of American and Chinese competition, Europe must increase its investment effort, simplify its regulatory environment and better coordinate its economic policies.[35]
For France, this requirement is even stronger because it must simultaneously restore its competitiveness, control its public finances and preserve its strategic capabilities. The necessary transformation therefore does not consist in weakening the state, but in reorienting it. The strategic state of the twenty-first century must be less a permanent producer of rules and more an organizer of capacities : setting objectives, selecting priorities, accelerating decisions, mobilizing private and public actors, measuring results.
France still has the necessary assets to succeed in this transformation. But it must accept a profound change in its administrative culture: moving from a logic of managing procedures to a logic of achieving objectives. The central question is no longer how much the state spends or how much it regulates, but what it actually allows to build by giving more room for manoeuvre to companies and innovators.
Box 2
The major French and European reports on the modernization of the State: an intellectual continuity from 1960 to 2025[36]
Since the early 1960s, several major French public reports have identified the same difficulty: the need to adapt the organization of the state to economic, technological and international transformations. Despite different historical contexts, this work converges on a central idea: the effectiveness of public action depends less on the quantitative size of the resources mobilized than on the ability to define priorities, remove unnecessary obstacles and evaluate results.
1. The Rueff-Armand Report (1960): freeing up the capacity for economic expansion
The report of the Committee for the Removal of Obstacles to Economic Expansion, chaired by Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, was one of the first major diagnoses of the France of the nascent Fifth Republic. It identifies the administrative, regulatory and professional rigidities likely to limit growth and calls for a modernisation of the economic environment.
His lesson remains relevant: a dynamic economy requires a framework that allows companies to invest, innovate and grow quickly.
2. The Bloch-Lainé Report (1963): modernising public management and economic responsibility
François Bloch-Lainé’s report on the reform of the company extends this reflection by looking at management structures, particularly those of public companies. It insists on the need to reconcile public responsibility, economic efficiency and management autonomy.
It announces an ever-present problem: the State can maintain strategic objectives while requiring organizations to control a culture of performance and responsibility.
3. The Nora Report (1967): the public company and the demands of efficiency
The report on public enterprises presented by Simon Nora underlines the need to clarify the relationship between the strategic State and public economic operators. It recommends a clearer distinction between missions of general interest, which are a matter for political decision-making, and management methods, which must meet criteria of economic efficiency.
This reflection prefigures contemporary debates on the governance of large strategic public companies.
4. The Gallois report (2012): the very slow awareness of the industrial stall
Fifty years after the first modernization reports, the Louis Gallois report on the competitiveness of French industry makes a worrying observation: loss of market share, insufficient productive investment, relatively low industrial margins and the need for a « competitiveness shock ».
His diagnosis is in line with the concerns that emerged after China’s entry into the WTO: in a globalised economy, industrial competitiveness becomes a condition for economic sovereignty.
5. The European Draghi Report (2024-2025): Europe and the changing era
Mario Draghi’s report on the future of European competitiveness, and not only French competitiveness, marks a new stage in a context where France is the Member State most seriously affected by deindustrialisation. This report is no longer just about the competitiveness of European companies, but about the continent’s ability to preserve its economic, technological and geopolitical model in a world dominated by great power competition.
Its central message is in line with that of previous French reports: Europe must now move from a mainly regulatory logic to a logic of strategic transformation based on investment, innovation and the concentration of resources.
The same question for sixty-five years
The succession of these reports reveals a remarkable continuity: France has long had a high capacity for analysis, but has encountered more difficulties in the sustainable implementation of the necessary reforms.
The central issue is therefore not the absence of diagnoses. It is that of the political and administrative capacity to transform diagnoses into strategic choices, to prioritize and to maintain a course over the long term.
C. Strategic choices that have reduced France’s room for manoeuvre: energy, digital, industry and public finances
France’s decline since the early 2000s cannot be explained solely by external factors linked to globalisation or the rise of China. It is also the result of national choices that have progressively reduced some key strategic capabilities. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, France had major assets: a nuclear industry that was among the most efficient in the world, major industrial groups with an international dimension, banking and insurance and financial engineering groups that were among the most efficient in the world, recognized scientific research, solid energy infrastructure and first-rate technological skills served by very high-quality technical and engineering executives.
The difficulty has therefore not been the absence of comparative advantages, but the insufficient capacity to preserve, modernize and transform them into sustainable competitive advantages.
1. Energy: the weakening of a major strategic advantage. The energy sector is probably the most emblematic example of this progressive loss of strategic vision. Since the 1970s, France had built an original model based on public control of electricity, the massive development of civil nuclear power and relative energy independence. This choice made it possible to have largely carbon-free, competitive and relatively stable electricity, which is a major advantage for French industry.[37]
However, since the early 2000s, this strategy has gradually been called into question. The closure of several reactors, the abandonment of the Astrid fourth-generation nuclear reactor project, hesitations regarding the construction of new nuclear capacity and certain regulatory orientations have contributed to weakening an industrial advantage accumulated over several decades.[38]
This development is all the more paradoxical as the global energy transition reinforces the importance of abundant, decarbonised and competitive electricity capacity. The major industrial powers — the United States, China, Japan, South Korea — now consider energy as a direct component of their industrial policy. The availability of controlled energy is becoming a determining factor in the location of industrial investments.
The recent recovery in French nuclear policy is therefore a positive development. But it also reveals the cost of lost time: in strategic industries, it can take several years or even decades to rebuild technological or industrial capacity.
2. Digital technology: a technological dependence that has become strategic. The second area concerns the digital revolution. Since 2001, the great powers have understood that digital technologies are no longer just economic tools, but infrastructure of power.
The United States has built global champions in digital platforms, cloud, software, and artificial intelligence. China has developed its own digital ecosystems around powerful national groups and a public policy of technological sovereignty.[39]
Europe, and particularly France, have excellent scientific skills but have faced more difficulties in transforming these skills into global digital companies. The relative weakness of financing ecosystems, the European fragmentation of markets and a culture that is sometimes cautious about emerging technologies have limited the emergence of major players comparable to the American or Chinese leaders.[40]
This situation does not mean that Europe is condemned to be permanently dependent on foreign technologies. It retains significant strengths in certain areas: cybersecurity, digital defence, specialised artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure and industrial technologies. But the reconquest now implies considering digital technology as a priority of sovereignty, and not as a simple economic sector among others.
3. Defence and sovereign industries: preserving capabilities rather than managing dependencies. France retains an exceptional advantage in the field of defence in Europe. It has a complete industry covering the main strategic segments: military aeronautics, naval defence, missiles, space, electronics and complex systems.
However, even in this area, budgetary pressure and European fragmentation have sometimes limited the ability to maintain a sufficient effort over the long term. However, defence perfectly illustrates the logic of the strategic state: certain capabilities cannot be preserved by the market alone, because their importance exceeds their immediate profitability.[41]
The rise in geopolitical tensions since 2022 has reminded us of this reality. Industrial sovereignty means not only financing the armed forces, but also maintaining the necessary skills, supply chains and production capacities.
4. Public finances: the decisive precondition of any national strategy. Finally, no ambitious industrial policy can be conducted in the long term without restoring public finances. The French budgetary situation is gradually reducing the room for manoeuvre needed to invest in strategic sectors.
The problem is not only the level of public spending, which remains one of the highest in developed economies. It is that of its composition and its effectiveness. A significant share of public resources is devoted to current expenditure, while the investments necessary for the productive, technological and energy transformation must be arbitrated in a constrained budgetary context.[42]
This situation requires a profound change in the French budgetary culture: moving from a logic of distributed resources to a logic of evaluated strategic investments. Each public expenditure must now be assessed according to its contribution to competitiveness, sovereignty and future prosperity.
This requirement also applies to France’s external spending. In a context of deteriorating public finances, any international aid policy must now be evaluated according to transparent criteria: strategic interest, economic return, diplomatic influence, direct or indirect benefits for the nation and Europe. International solidarity retains its legitimacy, but it cannot be dissociated from the constraints of financial sustainability and strategic interests in the long term.
All in all, the French drop since 2001 is not the result of an absolute lack of assets. It stems more from a difficulty in transforming these assets into a coherent and sustainable strategy. France still has exceptional capabilities; But their preservation now requires, without delay, clear choices, a prioritization and a superior capacity for execution.
The central question is therefore not whether France can regain an industrial and technological power. It is to know whether it is capable of creating the institutional, economic and budgetary conditions allowing this reconquest and whether a majority of the political class is asserting itself in this direction, in particular to break with the policies followed along the way since 2001 with an accentuated immobility since 2007, dramatically reinforced since 2012, and even worsened even more since 2017: It is the failure of three presidential terms that history will judge.
However, the diagnosis of the French dropout should not lead necessarily to a pessimistic or fatalistic conclusion. Economic history shows that industrial trajectories are never definitively written. As General de Gaulle’s thought reminds us, several nations have experienced phases of retreat before rebuilding new competitive advantages, provided that they have a clear strategic vision, appropriate institutions and a collective capacity to concentrate their efforts.
Japan, faced with the long stagnation of the 1990s, has embarked on a profound transformation of its industrial model since the beginning of the twenty-first century. South Korea and Taiwan have pursued a continuous policy of technological upgrading, while maintaining or even increasing the share of industrial employment between 2001 and 2025 in the case of Taiwan. India, long considered insufficiently industrialized, is now seeking to become a major player in global value chains and is catching up with its great historical rival China, having never gone through the dramatic communist period that destroyed so many millions of small entrepreneurs. The United States itself, after several decades of relative deindustrialization, has in recent years embarked on an assumed return to industrial policy.
These experiences show one constant: economic power is not only the result of a country’s initial endowments, but of its ability to organize its human, financial, scientific and industrial resources over the long term around clearly defined priorities.
France retains considerable assets, it must be stressed by resisting the fatalism of periods of doubt and contraction: a high-level scientific and technological base, leading companies in several strategic sectors, a still exceptional energy capacity, a particular geopolitical position and a tradition of public action which, when effectively directed, has enabled major successes!
The challenge is therefore not to rebuild a model that has disappeared, but to design a new balance between the State, companies, research and society. It is neither a return to an administered economy, nor an abandonment to market forces alone. It is a question of regaining a collective capacity to decide, invest and act in a global environment marked by competition between powers. It is this renewed conception of the strategic state that must now be clarified.
III. Rebuilding a French and European strategic state: choosing, simplifying, investing
The main lesson of the economic transformations that have taken place since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 is that global competition is no longer just between isolated companies or sectors, but between entire economic ecosystems. Industrial and technological power is now based on the ability to sustainably articulate research, training, financing, infrastructure, energy, innovation and public strategy.
This evolution requires us to overcome an oversimplifying opposition between state intervention and the functioning of the market. The experience of the past twenty-five years shows that the economies that have been most resilient to the upheavals of globalization are not those in which the state has withdrawn, but those in which it has been able to define a clear policy framework, support essential national capacities and create the conditions for private enterprises to take risks. to invest and conquer new markets.
The strategic state of the twenty-first century is therefore not defined by the volume of its interventions, nor by the multiplication of public measures. It is based on a capacity for choice. It must be able to identify the major transformations to come, to prioritize priorities, to mobilize the actors concerned and to regularly evaluate the results obtained. In other words, it is repeated, the strategic State is not the one that intervenes the most; it is the one that best prepares for the future by concentrating its resources on a limited number of priorities that are constantly evaluated.
This definition leads to a profound renewal of the French conception of public economic action. France has a long tradition of strategic intervention that has produced major successes when objectives were clearly defined and resources were mobilized over the long term. Post-war reconstruction, indicative planning, major industrial programmes, the creation of the civil nuclear sector, aeronautics, space, railway infrastructure and certain major industrial successes demonstrate that ambitious public action can be a decisive advantage when it combines political vision, technical competence and economic responsibility.
But the conditions of the twenty-first century are no longer those of decades of reconstruction and strong growth. The globalization of value chains, the digital revolution, the energy transition and the rise of geopolitical rivalries require a different state: less focused on the administrative management of existing sectors and more capable of anticipating disruptions, supporting innovation and accompanying the emergence of new competitive advantages.
The question is therefore not to return to an old model of administered economy or major programs decided exclusively from the top of the state, as the French left or the French technocracy so often repeat. The comparative experiences of China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India show, on the contrary, that the most effective industrial policies are based on a close articulation between public power and private initiative. The State sets strategic orientations, secures essential investments, coordinates players and creates a favourable environment; companies carry out innovation, risk-taking and the conquest of markets as freely as possible.
This evolution also implies a transformation of the French administrative culture. The central question is no longer that of the existence of a strong state, but that of its effectiveness. A strategic State must be able to distinguish between essential standards and unnecessary constraints, operating expenses from investments for the future, effective policies from mechanisms that do not produce the expected results. It must accept the evaluation, selection and sometimes abandonment of policies that do not achieve their objectives.
Finally, the reconstruction of a French and European strategic capacity requires a fundamental condition: to have the necessary resources to act. The control of public finances is not only an accounting imperative; it is a condition of sovereignty. A state that is permanently constrained by debt gradually loses its ability to invest in the sectors that will determine its future power.
The objective is therefore not to reduce public ambition, but to make it more selective, more efficient and more sustainable. France and Europe still have considerable assets, as we have said. Their future will depend on their ability to transform these assets into a collective strategy, by accepting a simple but demanding rule: in a world of competition between powers, the nations that prepare for the future are those that retain the freedom to choose their destiny.
A. Rethinking the doctrine of the strategic state: from the interventionist state to the coordinating state
The transformation of the global economic system since the beginning of the twenty-first century requires a redefinition of the very notion of the strategic state. For several decades, particularly after the 1980s, the European economic debate was often structured around an opposition between a state considered potentially inefficient and a market that was supposed to be able to spontaneously ensure the optimal allocation of resources. This vision accompanied an important phase of liberalization, trade opening, and global economic integration.
This period has produced undeniable results. The opening of markets, competition and the international movement of capital have encouraged innovation, reduced costs and led to a considerable increase in world trade. But the experience of the last twenty-five years has also revealed the limits of an approach based exclusively on the general regulation of the markets. When economic competition becomes a competition between powers, comparative advantages are no longer just inherited; they are built, maintained and sometimes protected by long-term public strategies.
China since 2001, the United States since the 2020s, but also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and now India, illustrate this evolution. None of these countries has abandoned the market economy. However, all of them considered that certain capabilities – critical technologies, energy, infrastructure, defence, digital, essential supply chains – were strategic interests requiring special public coordination. The table in Annex 1 on the transformations of the strategic States since 2001 allows us to place Europe in this context. This table visually highlights the glaring time gap between the Asian/American awareness and the European reaction so late.
The major lesson of this comparison is that the strategic state is not a state that seeks to replace companies in the long term. Nor is there a State that distributes public aid indiscriminately to all economic sectors. It is a state capable of defining priorities, organizing ecosystems, creating an environment conducive to private investment and concentrating its resources on areas where the country’s economic and geopolitical future is at stake. We have already outlined this in our exergue, which refers to General de Gaulle’s strategic thinking: the strategic state is not the one that intervenes the most; it is the one that best prepares for the future by concentrating its resources on a sustainable basis on a limited number of priorities that are constantly evaluated. This definition implies three breaks with certain traditional practices of French public action.
The first break concerns the shift from a logic of dispersed support to a logic of strategic choices. In an environment of limited resources and intense global competition, no State can claim to maintain a dominant position in all sectors. The fundamental question is therefore not only how much to invest, but where to invest, according to what criteria and with what measurable objectives.
Effective industrial policies are based precisely on this ability to select. South Korea has focused its efforts on electronics, semiconductors, automotive, and the naval industries. Taiwan has built a global leadership position in semiconductors through a patient strategy combining public research, specialized training, and private companies. Japan has gradually shifted its industrial policy towards advanced technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence and secure value chains. India is now looking to apply a similar logic in the manufacturing and digital sectors.[43]
The second rupture concerns the relationship between the State and companies. The French model has long been marked by a vertical relationship between the administration and economic operators, inherited in part from the tradition of major public programmes. However, contemporary technological transformations require more horizontal cooperation between public authorities, companies, universities, investors and territories, as is typically the case in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India.
The strategic state must therefore become a coordinating state. Its primary function is not to decide for economic actors, but to create the conditions for their collective success. This conception is in line with certain intuitions developed in France in the 1960s on the need to distinguish between the strategic responsibility of the State and the management autonomy of economic operators.[44]
The third break concerns the administrative culture itself. A strategic policy requires explicit objectives, clear timetables and regular evaluation of results. Successful states are those that know how to correct their policies when objectives are not achieved. The evaluation therefore does not constitute an additional administrative constraint; it is a condition of public efficiency.
This development is particularly necessary for France. Its history demonstrates that the state can play a decisive role in major economic transformations when it combines vision, skills and continuity. But it also shows that the proliferation of mechanisms, standards and sectoral interventions does not necessarily guarantee a coherent strategy.
The reconstruction of a French strategic state does not therefore consist in increasing public intervention indefinitely. On the contrary, it presupposes making public action more selective, more legible and more effective. It requires a state capable of renouncing certain secondary interventions in order to concentrate its resources on areas where future competitiveness is at stake.
This evolution naturally leads to an essential question: how can we concretely move from an administering State to a State capable of accelerating innovation, investment and reindustrialization?
Box 3
The Three Ages of the French Economic State: Reconstruction, Regulation and Strategic Reconquest (1945-2025)
French economic history since 1945 shows that the question of the role of the state has never been fixed. Depending on the period, national priorities and the international environment, France has successively developed several forms of public economic action. The contemporary challenge is therefore not to create a strategic state from scratch, but to rediscover a capacity for guidance adapted to the challenges of the twenty-first century.
1. 1945-1980: the reconstructive and developing state. In the aftermath of the Second World War, France opted for economic modernization based on strong state involvement. In a context marked by reconstruction, the scarcity of private capital and the need to catch up with the most advanced economies, the public authorities play a leading role in defining economic priorities.
Indicative planning, which began in 1946 with the creation of the General Planning Commission, was one of the major instruments of this period. It is not based on a Soviet-style administered economy, but on coordination between the State, businesses, social partners and experts in order to identify priority sectors and guide investments.
This period saw the achievement of several major industrial and technological successes: modernization of infrastructure, development of civil nuclear energy, creation of large industrial groups, aeronautics, space, rail transport and telecommunications.
The success of this period was due less to the quantitative importance of public intervention than to several essential characteristics: a long-term vision, a concentration of resources, a strong technical competence of the administration and political continuity.
2. 1980-2000: the regulatory state in a globalised economy. From the 1980s onwards, the international economic environment changed profoundly. Financial liberalisation, trade opening, European integration and the globalisation of value chains are gradually leading to a transformation of the economic role of the State.
France, like most developed economies, is moving towards a model based more on competition, regulation and open markets. Privatisation, the deregulation of certain sectors and European integration are profoundly changing the traditional instruments of industrial policy.
This development was a response to real challenges: stimulating competition, improving economic efficiency, promoting innovation and further integrating the French economy into world trade.
However, this paradigm shift has also contributed to weakening certain industrial policy instruments. The belief in a naturally beneficial globalization has sometimes led to an underestimation of the importance of maintaining national capacities in certain strategic sectors.
3. Since 2001: the reinvention of a strategic state in a world of economic rivalries. China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 marked a new historical phase. Globalization is not disappearing, but it is changing its nature. It is gradually becoming a competition between large economic groups capable of mobilizing their public, technological and industrial resources.
Faced with this evolution, several countries are reinventing their model of public intervention. The United States is developing a new industrial policy around critical technologies. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are strengthening their technological strategies. India is seeking to increase its industrial integration. China is pursuing a coordinated policy of upgrading and securing value chains.
France and Europe are rediscovering the need for a strategic capability later. Successive crises — pandemic, energy tensions, war in Ukraine, technological rivalries — are accelerating this awareness.
But the contemporary strategic state cannot be a simple reproduction of that of the Glorious Thirties. Conditions have changed. Today’s economy relies more on rapid innovation, international networks of skills, digital technologies and the ability to continuously adapt.
A continuity to be regained: from the producing state to the strategic state. The main lesson of this historical trajectory is that France has never been a stranger to the logic of the strategic state. It has even been one of the most accomplished examples of this for several decades.
The current difficulty is therefore not to choose between the State and the market. It consists of rebuilding a balance adapted to the twenty-first century: a state capable of setting long-term orientations, securing essential capacities, stimulating private investment and evaluating its own policies.
The central question is no longer that of the return of the state, but that of its strategic effectiveness.
Sources in the box: On the formation and evolution of the notion of the strategic state, see in particular Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Paris, Fayard, 1976; Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vols.; Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l’anti-hasard, Paris, Gallimard, 1965; François Bloch-Lainé, Pour une réforme de l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1963; Simon Nora, Rapport sur les entreprises publiques, Paris, La Documentation française, 1968; Elie Cohen, « High-tech » Colbertism. Économie des télécommunications et des grands projets, Paris, Hachette, 1992; Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024; see also François Souty, « The return of the strategic state: the transformations of industrial policies since China’s accession to the WTO », Le Diplomate Média, 2026.
B. Reforming the economic environment: simplifying, accelerating, empowering
The reconstruction of a strategic state cannot be limited to the definition of new industrial priorities or the announcement of investment programmes. It also involves transforming the environment in which companies, researchers, investors and public actors operate. An effective industrial policy can only have an impact if decisions are taken quickly, if the rules are understandable and stable, and if economic actors have the freedom to experiment, invest and develop.
One of the paradoxes of contemporary France lies precisely in the gap between an often high public ambition and an insufficiently rapid capacity for execution. France has competent administrations, recognised public engineering and a significant capacity for collective mobilisation during major crises. However, it is still confronted with an accumulation of procedures, standards and mechanisms that can slow down the necessary economic transformations.
The problem is obviously not the existence of rules. Any advanced economy needs a protective legal framework that guarantees security, fair competition, environmental protection and the confidence of economic actors. The central question is that of proportionality and effectiveness: a standard has a lasting justification only if its collective benefit clearly exceeds its economic and administrative cost.
This question is not new. The Rueff-Armand report of 1960 already stressed that certain institutional obstacles could limit the capacity of the French economy to expand. More recently, successive reports on industrial competitiveness, administrative simplification and the quality of the law have pointed out that regulatory complexity is a particularly penalising factor for small and medium-sized enterprises.[45]
The international comparison is instructive in this respect. Countries that have succeeded in their industrial transformation have not necessarily abolished public rules; Above all, they have sought to make their public action more predictable and faster. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have built economic administrations capable of communicating closely with companies and quickly resolving blockages that could prevent the development of strategic activities.[46]
The French issue is therefore less that of a withdrawal of the State than that of an evolution of its method of action. The administration must move more from a logic of prior control to a logic of strategic support. This means simplifying procedures where the public objective is clear, speeding up investment decisions, reducing authorisation times and giving more visibility to economic actors. In addition, the politicization of the high courts (Council of State, administrative courts, so-called independent administrative authorities, in particular), and of an ultra-politicized technocracy, massively influenced by a very partisan ideology, must ebb in order to regain more impartiality and neutrality in the assessment of the economic cases submitted to them: the idea of a « Civil Service » à la Britannique or à la japonaise in which the high civil servants cannot remain in place after having held political office should be revisited, unless we have to accept to institutionalize an American-style « spoiler system ».
This development concerns industrial projects in particular. In a world where investments can be quickly located between several continents, administrative time becomes a direct factor in competitiveness. An industrial project that has been delayed for several years may lose its economic advantage, be moved to another country or never see the light of day.
The question of evaluation is also a major issue. Strategic states are characterized by their ability to measure the real effectiveness of their public policies. They agree to modify or abandon devices that do not produce the expected results. This culture of evaluation must become a central principle of French modernization.
The state can only be a strategist if it is able to learn from its mistakes and the experiences of third parties. The proliferation of public policies without regular measurement of their results leads to a dispersion of resources and a loss of clarity. Conversely, an effective strategy requires clear targets, performance indicators and an institutional capacity to quickly correct trajectories. This requirement is directly related to the budgetary issue. In a context of constrained public finances, each public euro must be considered as a strategic resource. The priority must no longer be just to finance more schemes, but to ensure that the expenditure actually contributes to competitiveness, economic sovereignty and preparation for the future.
Finally, this transformation presupposes a change in the relationship between the State and companies. The public authorities must stop considering the company only as a player subject to regulatory obligations or as a beneficiary of public aid. It must see it as a strategic partner that is essential to the country’s value creation, innovation and international presence.[47] The experience of France’s major industrial successes shows that periods of success have always been based on this articulation: a State capable of setting a course, companies capable of innovating and investing, scientists capable of transforming knowledge into technologies and a society capable of supporting these transformations.
Thus, administrative simplification should not be understood as a reduction in public ambition. On the contrary, it is a condition of this ambition. A state that wants to become a strategist again must devote less energy to managing the complexity it has created and more to preparing for the technological, industrial and geopolitical breakthroughs that will determine the future. France’s industrial recovery will therefore depend as much on the ability to invest in priority sectors as on the ability to unleash the economic forces capable of supporting these investments.
Box 4
Why are some states transforming their industrial decisions more quickly?
Comparison France – Germany – Asian economies
Contemporary industrial competition is no longer based solely on the volume of investments mobilized. It also depends on a country’s ability to quickly turn a strategic direction into concrete achievements. In an environment marked by technological acceleration, the rise of geopolitical rivalries and the need to secure value chains, decision-making time is itself becoming a factor of economic power.
The comparative experience of the major industrial economies shows that countries that succeed in preserving or rebuilding their productive power have several characteristics in common: a long-term vision, effective coordination between public and private actors, a capacity to adapt quickly and a regular evaluation of the results obtained. The institutional models may be different, but the strategic logic remains comparable.
a. Germany: decentralized coordination at the service of industrial power. Germany is a particularly instructive example for France. Its model is not based on a centralising state comparable to the French tradition, but on a close articulation between the federal state, the Länder, the chambers of commerce and industry, universities, applied research institutes and companies.
The strength of the German model lies in the depth of its intermediate industrial fabric, the Mittelstand, which is made up of companies that are often family-owned, highly specialised and capable of occupying global positions in specific technological segments. This organization allows for a remarkable continuity between professional training, applied research and industrial production.
This ability to coordinate partly explains the resilience of German industry in many sectors for several decades. However, it does not mean that this model is free of weaknesses. The historical dependence on abundant and inexpensive energy, the significant exposure to the Chinese market and certain difficulties in the digital field have revealed the limits of a model that must now evolve.
German education is therefore not that of the absence of a strategic state, but that of a state whose action is exercised more by the coordination of actors than by the direct direction of the economy.
b. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan: strategic continuity as a competitive advantage. Asian economies offer another major lesson: that of the continuity of industrial policies.
Japan, despite several decades of economic stagnation after the bursting of its financial bubble in the early 1990s, has retained a capacity for coordination between administration, research and companies. The evolution of the role of MITI and then METI shows a gradual adaptation of the Japanese strategic state, moving from a logic of classic industrial development to an approach more focused on innovation, critical technologies and securing value chains.
South Korea has followed a different trajectory but based on a comparable principle. Since the 1960s, the State has supported the move upmarket in industry by combining skills development, support for research and the international growth of large industrial groups. This strategy has enabled the country to become a major global player in semiconductors, automotive, shipbuilding and digital technologies.
Taiwan also illustrates this logic of strategic continuity. Its dominant position in semiconductors is not the result of a spontaneous advantage, but of a patient policy combining public research, scientific training, institutional support and industrial specialization around highly integrated ecosystems.
In these three economies, the state has not replaced companies. It has created the conditions for their upgrading, internationalization and permanent adaptation to technological transformations.
c. France: an analytical capacity often greater than an execution capacity. However, France has considerable assets: quality scientific research, excellent training, leading companies in several strategic sectors, a complete defence industry, a historic nuclear industry and a recognised capacity for innovation.
Its difficulty lies less in understanding the issues at stake than in transforming diagnoses into sustainable and quickly executed decisions. For several decades, reports on competitiveness, state modernization or administrative reform have often accurately identified the obstacles facing the country.
The main weakness is more related to the continuity and coherence of public action. Frequent changes in policy, the proliferation of successive arrangements and administrative complexity can limit the effectiveness of policies that are based on relevant analyses.
International comparison thus shows that industrial power does not depend only on available resources, but on the collective capacity to organize them over the long term. An effective industrial strategy requires a clear vision, but also institutions capable of transforming this vision into operational decisions.
d. The same lesson is to speed up public action without renouncing the rule of law. The objective for France is obviously not to copy foreign models. Institutions, administrative traditions and economic balances differ profoundly from country to country.
Rather, the common lesson is that of a new conception of public action, impartial and neutral: a state capable of defining long-term priorities, mobilizing the actors concerned, reducing unnecessary obstacles and objectively evaluating the results obtained. The strategic state of the twenty-first century is therefore not the one that decides everything in the place of companies; it is the one that allows the country’s economic, scientific and industrial forces to act more quickly and effectively.
Sources in the box: On the transformations of industrial policies since China’s accession to the WTO and the return of the strategic state, see in particular François Souty, « The recomposition of the Chinese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026) », Le Diplomate Média, 2026; id., « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, June 17, 2026; id., « South Korean industrial policy: from the developer state to the technological strategist state, » Le Diplomate Média, 2026; id., « The recomposition of the Taiwanese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): from globalization to economic security, » Le Diplomate Média, 2026; Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1982; Sebastian Heilmann, Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China’s Rise, Hong Kong, The Chinese University Press, 2018; Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2017; Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024.
C. Restoring an offensive industrial policy: concentrating resources on critical sectors
The reconstruction of a strategic state cannot be limited to a reform of administrative methods or an improvement of the regulatory environment. It also presupposes answering a fundamental question: what economic, technological and industrial capacities must a nation absolutely master in order to preserve its decision-making autonomy in a world marked by competition between powers?
Since 2001, China, the United States and several Asian powers have gradually answered this question by identifying sectors considered decisive for the future. China has developed successive strategies to move upmarket in industry and to master critical technologies. The United States has embarked on a return to industrial policy around semiconductors, energy, digital technologies and defence.[48] Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India have also identified national priorities based on their comparative advantages and vulnerabilities.
Europe and France have long hesitated to adopt such an approach, for fear of excessive public intervention or a challenge to the principles of competition. However, recent crises have shown the limits of an approach based solely on the opening of markets and the search for the lowest cost. Economic resilience, security of supply and mastery of essential technologies have become integral components of power.
The industrial policy of the twenty-first century cannot therefore be a general policy of support for all economic activities. It must be a policy of strategic selection. The challenge is not to artificially protect doomed sectors, but to preserve or rebuild capabilities whose disappearance would create an over-dependence on foreign powers.[49]
This approach leads to the identification of several priority areas.
a. Energy: regaining a sustainable strategic advantage. The first priority concerns energy. The availability of abundant, competitive and carbon-free energy is now one of the main determinants of industrial location. In this area, France has historically had an exceptional advantage thanks to the development of the civil nuclear industry. The construction of the French nuclear fleet from the 1970s onwards was one of the most successful examples of a strategic industrial policy. It had made it possible to have largely carbon-free electricity, relatively stable in price and favourable to the establishment of industrial activities.
However, the gradual questioning of this strategy over the last few decades has weakened this advantage. Hesitations regarding the renewal of the fleet, the abandonment of the Astrid project for a fourth generation reactor and nuclear fuel recycling, delays in the launch of new capacity and certain regulatory guidelines have contributed to reducing industrial visibility.
The current revival of nuclear power is therefore a positive development, but it also highlights a fundamental reality: in strategic industries, misdirection is paid for over the long term. A nuclear power plant, an industrial sector or a scientific competence cannot be rebuilt in a few years but over 20 years to triumph over the regulatory and normative barriers put in place over the past fifteen years to be operational: it is imperative to remove these so-called environmental barriers and standards that are formally contrary to vital strategic imperatives. Energy must therefore be considered not only as an environmental issue, but as a strategic infrastructure for industrial competitiveness.[50] From this point of view, action will have to be taken by the French government, as in Japan, South Korea, China and the United States, to subordinate European competition policy to strategic priorities without prejudice to ideological issues.[51] particularly those that are supposed to be environmental, calling into question the economic efficiency and sustainability of the French sector, as we have observed – against all expectations after the Draghi report – a real drift of the von der Leyen II Commission in 2025 and 2026.[52]
b. Digital technologies: transforming skills into economic sovereignty. The second priority concerns digital technology. The global dominance of major U.S. platforms and the rise of Chinese ecosystems have shown that digital technologies have become infrastructure of power. It has become commonplace to remember that the mastery of data, artificial intelligence, the cloud, semiconductors, cybersecurity and digital infrastructures now conditions the competitiveness of all economic sectors. But talking about it without multiple vigorous follow-up actions remains totally insufficient, and will remain so.
Europe has excellent scientific skills and high-performance companies in certain segments, but it remains highly dependent in several critical areas: the case of financial data, market data, is particularly glaring from this point of view.[53] The French and European difficulty is therefore not the lack of intellectual or scientific capacities, but the difficulty of transforming these capacities into world champions capable of competing on a large scale, both for reasons of the use of intellectual property rights and the availability of capital for financing and the increase in availability of new digital products and services.
The answer cannot be solely regulatory. Consumer protection and the regulation of large platforms remain necessary, but they must be complemented by an offensive strategy promoting the emergence of powerful European players. The objective must be to move from a logic of regulation of technologies designed elsewhere to a logic of creation and mastery of the technologies of the future.
c. Defence: preserving a sovereign industrial base. The third priority concerns defence. In a geopolitical environment that has been profoundly transformed since 2022, military capacity is directly dependent on industrial capacity.
France still has a considerable advantage in Europe: it has a complete defence industrial and technological base covering aeronautics, military naval, missiles, electronics, space and complex systems. This capability is an essential element of sovereignty. It cannot be evaluated solely according to immediate economic criteria. Some strategic industries must be preserved because they guarantee political and military decision-making autonomy. Defence industrial policy must therefore be thought of over the long term, by combining research, public procurement, industrial skills and European cooperation, only when the latter strengthens national sovereignty and capabilities.[54]
d. Agriculture, food and water management: the new dimensions of sovereignty. Economic sovereignty is no longer limited to technology industries. The recent crises have reminded us of the strategic importance of sectors that have long been considered secondary. Agriculture and the agri-food industry are therefore essential elements of national resilience. France still has considerable assets in this area, but must face several challenges: international competitiveness, renewal of farms, climate adaptation and control of water resources.
The issue of water is becoming particularly strategic. The growing tensions linked to climate change show that the management of this resource must now be considered as a major economic, industrial and geopolitical issue. France has significant expertise in water management, infrastructure and environmental technologies. They must be more valued as sectors of the future. French governments must ensure that the preservation of the sovereignty and sustainability of French resources is respected by European policies.
e. Industrial know-how: preserving skills before they disappear. Finally, a strategic industrial policy must integrate a dimension that is often underestimated: the preservation of skills. An industry does not rely solely on machines or capital. It is based on engineers, technicians, skilled workers, researchers and know-how accumulated over several generations.
The loss of an industrial skill can be irreversible when training chains and associated ecosystems disappear. Industrial reconquest therefore presupposes an ambitious policy of training, apprenticeship and attractiveness of industrial professions.
All in all, French industrial policy can no longer be conceived as an addition of sectoral measures. It must become a strategy of economic power based on a few clearly identified priorities. France has neither the financial resources nor the demographic size to intervene everywhere. It must therefore make choices. The real question is not whether the state should support industry, but whether it is able to distinguish between what is strategic and what is not. The industrial reconquest will thus require a simple rule: to concentrate public and private resources on the capacities that condition the economic, technological and geopolitical independence of the country.[55]
Box 5
Critical sectors of French economic sovereignty by 2035: choosing rather than dispersing
The notion of economic sovereignty has evolved profoundly since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It no longer means autarky or the desire to produce in isolation all the goods necessary for a modern economy. No major country today can function without international trade, scientific cooperation or integration into certain global value chains. Economic sovereignty now refers to a country’s ability to retain freedom of decision in essential areas, to avoid excessive dependencies and to have the necessary powers to act when circumstances require it. This conception leads to a distinction between sectors that are merely important for economic activity and sectors that are truly strategic, i.e. those whose loss or excessive dependence could have a lasting effect on the country’s competitiveness, security or political autonomy.
Energy is the first of these areas. Future industrial competitiveness will largely depend on the ability to have abundant, decarbonized and competitive electricity. In this area, France still has a major historical advantage thanks to its nuclear fleet and its industrial skills. The priority is therefore not only to produce more energy, but to rebuild a complete sector combining research, engineering, training and industrial capacities.
Digital technology is a second priority. The mastery of digital infrastructures, the cloud, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data and electronic components will gradually condition all economic activities. The objective cannot be to artificially create European equivalents of all the major global platforms, but to preserve autonomous capacities in areas where excessive dependence would become a strategic risk.
Defence is also a major area of sovereignty. France still has a defence industrial and technological base that is unique in Europe. This capability must be considered as a long-term strategic investment, as it directly conditions the country’s diplomatic and military autonomy.
The health industries, biotechnology and certain sectors related to the life sciences should also be considered as priorities. The tensions that emerged during the health crisis have reminded us that the control of certain essential productions cannot be entirely abandoned to globalised supply chains.
Food security and water management are also becoming growing issues. France has considerable assets in agriculture, agri-food, environmental engineering and water resources management. These areas must now be integrated into a broader conception of economic sovereignty, as the consequences of climate change will increase their strategic importance.
Finally, the preservation of industrial know-how is a cross-cutting condition for all these priorities. A nation can buy a technology, a machine or a raw material; it cannot quickly recreate an industrial skill that has disappeared. The training of engineers, technicians and skilled workers must therefore be considered as a strategic investment in the same way as infrastructure or research.
The challenge for France is therefore not to engage in a dispersed industrial policy aimed at supporting all sectors. Such an approach would lead to diluting the available resources and reducing the overall effectiveness of public action. The real difficulty of a strategic state consists precisely in accepting selection: identifying the areas where the economic, technological and geopolitical future of the country is at stake, and then concentrating the necessary resources on them in the long term.
This logic also implies an evolution of the European method. In a world dominated by large economic groups, France can only act effectively by including its priorities in a coherent European strategy. But Europe can only become an economic and technological power if it too agrees to prioritise its objectives. The sovereignty of the twenty-first century is therefore not based on the ability to produce everything, but on the ability to control what conditions the freedom to choose.
Box sources: See in particular Mario DRAGHI, The Future of European Competitiveness, Part A: A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 69 p. ; The Future of European Competitiveness, Part B: In-depth Analysis and Recommendations, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 328 p. ; European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, European Economic Security Strategy, Joint Communication JOIN(2023) 20 final, Brussels, 20 June 2023, 19 p. ; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Industry, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2023. Enabling Transitions in Times of Disruption, Paris, OECD Publishing, 2023, 584 p. ; Jean-Baptiste FRESSOZ, Sans transition. Une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, coll. « L’Univers historique », 2024, 480 p. ; François SOUTY, « The recomposition of the Chinese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2025): from globalisation to economic security », Le Diplomate Média, 29 April 2026, 40 p. ; by the same author, « The Return of the American Strategic State: From Liberal Globalization to Economic Security (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 11 June 2026, 45 p.
D. Reconciling industrial policy and competition policy: towards a new European doctrine
For several decades, the European Union has built a large part of its economic model around an essential principle: competition is the best way to guarantee economic efficiency, innovation and consumer protection. This approach has led to major advances in the integration of the internal market, the reduction of certain national dominant positions and the creation of a more open economic area.
However, the international environment in which this doctrine has developed has changed profoundly. Since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, global economic competition is no longer based solely on the ability of companies to compete in a relatively homogeneous market framework. It increasingly opposes comprehensive economic models in which states mobilize their industrial, financial, technological and regulatory policies in the service of their strategic companies.
This development does not mean that Europe should abandon its commitment to competition. An economy without competition quickly loses efficiency, innovation and adaptability. But it implies recognising that competition policy cannot ignore the geopolitical dimension of economic competition in the long term. The central question is therefore not to choose between industrial policy and competition policy. It consists in finding a new balance between these two requirements.
a. A European doctrine historically focused on the opening of markets. The construction of Europe was based on a strong intuition: the removal of internal barriers and the guarantee of fair competition should enable European companies to benefit from a market large enough to reach a global scale.
This logic has produced considerable results. The single market has promoted trade, stimulated certain industrial specialisations and increased Europe’s economic attractiveness.
However, this approach has often led to underestimating the role of industrial policies conducted by major external powers. While European companies were subject to strict rules on state aid, mergers or competition, their Chinese or American competitors often benefited from national ecosystems integrating public funding, technological support, public procurement and industrial strategy.
The problem is therefore not the existence of European competition law, but its adaptation to a world in which economic competition has become a competition between models.
b. Towards greater consideration of economic sovereignty. The successive crises since 2020 have accelerated this doctrinal evolution. The pandemic has exposed European dependencies in some key sectors. Energy tensions have shown the strategic importance of industrial and technological choices. Sino-US rivalries have underscored the need to secure some critical value chains.
The European Union has started to evolve its instruments, albeit belatedly, in practice since 2024. Foreign investment controls, regulations on foreign subsidies, new devices for semiconductors, artificial intelligence and green technologies are evidence of a growing awareness.
The 2024 Draghi Report was an important milestone in highlighting that Europe must simultaneously accelerate innovation, reduce its strategic dependencies and improve its competitiveness. The question is no longer just how the internal market works optimally, but whether Europe has sufficient economic players in the sectors that are decisive for the future.[56]
c. A necessary but measured evolution. However, this development must not lead to a purely defensive or protectionist conception of economic policy. Europe derives part of its power from its international openness, the quality of its law and the attractiveness of its market.
Rather, the real reform is to integrate three complementary dimensions into the competitive analysis: innovation, the resilience of value chains and the ability of European companies to compete in a global economy characterised by significant asymmetries.
In certain strategic sectors, an overly narrow approach to merger control can lead to the emergence of European players capable of competing with American or Chinese groups with a global dimension. Conversely, an industrial policy that lacks competitive discipline could foster rent-seeking situations and reduce economic efficiency.
The challenge is therefore to build a new doctrine: a competition policy that protects the functioning of the market while contributing to European economic power.
d. France is faced with a double requirement. For France, this European evolution must be accompanied by national reflection. Industrial policy cannot succeed without a competitive environment that is favourable to the growth of French companies. This means simplifying certain procedures, improving access to finance, promoting productive investment and allowing successful companies to scale up.
France suffers less from a lack of ideas than from a difficulty in transforming its innovations into large global companies. The question of critical size, the financing of growth and the ability to retain economic decision-making centres must therefore become an absolute and intangible political priority, determined with a very strong political will, absent since 2012 or even before. The positions or recent developments of the three French economists, probably the most prominent in the world, particularly among the Anglo-Saxons on competition issues, the Nobel Prize in Economics Jean Tirole, Professor Philippe Aghion and Professor Jenny, deserve to be integrated into both European and national political approaches, as a matter of urgency.[57] This doctrinal evolution is now widely shared. Jean Tirole insists on the need to articulate competition and the correction of market failures; Philippe Aghion points out that China has demonstrated that intense competition can be organised as part of a coordinated industrial strategy; Frédéric Jenny shows that industrial policy and competition policy must now be conceived as two complementary policies in the service of European competitiveness.
Reconciling industrial policy and competition policy ultimately means rediscovering a more balanced approach: protecting competition when it stimulates innovation and efficiency, but preventing an overly restrictive interpretation from weakening European capacities in global competition, as China has done, imitated by Japan or South Korea.[58]
Thus a new conception of European economic policy is emerging: open competition, but aware of power relations; an ambitious industrial policy, but subject to evaluation; a dynamic market, but capable of preserving the strategic capabilities necessary for its autonomy.[59]
The question is therefore no longer whether Europe must choose between market and strategy. She must learn to make one work in the service of the other.
Defining the principles of a new strategic state and identifying priority sectors are only the first conditions for economic reconquest. An industrial strategy is only as good as the real capacity of a country to implement it over the long term.
The experience of the major economic powers shows that success depends as much on the relevance of the choices made as on the quality of the instruments mobilized: controlled public finances, efficient administration, sufficient investment capacity and a clear articulation between public action and private initiative.
The central question now becomes that of the means of action: how can we enable France and Europe to regain a sustainable capacity to act in an international environment marked by the competition of powers?
IV. The conditions for a French and European reconquest: restoring the capacity to act
Since China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, the nature of global economic competition has changed profoundly. It is no longer based solely on the ability of companies to produce at the best cost in a framework of open globalization. It now depends on the ability of governments to steer technological transformations, secure essential value chains and sustainably mobilize their resources in the service of strategic objectives. The comparative analysis carried out in this article shows that the countries that have succeeded in preserving or strengthening their industrial power are not necessarily those that have spent the most, but those that have been able to concentrate their resources on clearly identified priorities and maintain coherence of action over time.
France and the European Union still have considerable assets: high scientific and technical skills, high-performance infrastructure, global companies in several sectors, a recognized research capacity and a historical tradition of public economic action. But these advantages are no longer enough. They must be accompanied by a profound transformation of the conditions for State action.
The real issue is therefore not a simple return to the interventionist state of the past. The strategic state of the twenty-first century must be able to choose, invest, coordinate and evaluate. It must also agree to review its own structures, expenditures and methods of intervention in order to devote more resources to the priorities that shape the future.
The industrial and technological reconquest thus presupposes a threefold evolution: restoring the financial margins necessary for strategic investment, modernizing public action to gain in efficiency and mobilizing more private forces of financing and innovation. Finally, it requires a Europe capable of going beyond a mainly regulatory logic to become an economic and geopolitical player fully aware of the balance of power.
The first condition for this transformation concerns public finances. No State can claim to conduct an ambitious industrial policy in the long term if an increasing proportion of its resources is absorbed by insufficiently assessed current expenditure or if its debt gradually reduces its decision-making margins.
A. Restoring financial margins and redirecting public spending towards strategic priorities
The budgetary question is now one of the central points of France’s capacity for action. France still has a high level of compulsory levies and one of the highest levels of public spending in the developed economies. However, this considerable mobilization of resources does not always translate into an equivalent capacity for strategic investment, administrative modernization or sustainable improvement of public services.
This situation reveals less a problem of the overall level of resources than a problem of allocation and efficiency. A strategic state must be able to distinguish between spending that prepares for the future and that which mainly maintains existing balances.
Economic history shows that periods of successful transformation have always been based on this ability to prioritise. After 1945, France devoted a significant part of its resources to reconstruction, industrial modernization, infrastructure and research. The success of the civil nuclear programme, aeronautical development or major public facilities was based on an exceptional concentration of resources around clearly identified objectives.[60] The current situation is obviously different, but the principle remains: a power policy presupposes budgetary choices consistent with the stated ambitions.
The first priority is therefore to restore financial margins that will allow more investment in strategic areas. The reduction of public deficits should not be seen solely as an accounting requirement imposed by European rules or the financial markets. It is a condition of economic sovereignty. A state that is too indebted necessarily has less freedom to respond to crises, support its industries or finance technological breakthroughs.
This requirement requires a systematic reassessment of the effectiveness of public spending. The debate must not automatically oppose public spending and the productive economy. Some public spending is essential investment: research, infrastructure, education, defence, energy transition, health or climate adaptation. Others need to be questioned when they are not producing the expected results or when they could be carried out more effectively. This culture of evaluation remains insufficiently developed in France. Too often, public mechanisms are created but rarely abolished, even when their effectiveness appears limited. On the contrary, a strategic state must agree to reallocate its resources according to the results obtained.[61]
This requirement also concerns France’s international policy. In a context of severe budgetary constraints, all public spending, including external spending, must be evaluated according to its contribution to the country’s strategic interests. International aid retains a justification when it meets clearly identified objectives: geopolitical stability, crisis prevention, economic influence, access to essential resources or the opening of markets for French companies. However, it cannot be considered independent of the constraints to which French citizens are subject and the investments necessary for national modernization.
The question is therefore not that of France’s withdrawal from the world, but that of a foreign policy that is better articulated with its economic and strategic interests. A state that wishes to have a lasting influence must first preserve the means of its own power.
Finally, the reorientation of public spending must accompany industrial transformation. The savings made must not simply reduce deficits; They must make it possible to finance investments that are decisive for the future: fundamental and applied research, scientific and technical training, energy infrastructure, digital technologies, defence, climate adaptation and support for strategic industrial ecosystems.
The real challenge is therefore to move from a logic of public spending that is largely corrective or of simple day-to-day operation to a logic of strategic public investment. The central question is not how much the state spends, but what it chooses to prepare. As General de Gaulle already recalled in 1938, » growing one’s strength to the extent of one’s designs » presupposes first of all proportioning the means to the ambitions. A credible industrial policy begins with this requirement for coherence between the stated objectives and the resources actually mobilized.
Box 6
Restoring financial margins to invest in the future: the golden rule of the strategic state
One of the main lessons of contemporary economic history is that no power policy can be conducted in the long term without coherence between the stated ambitions and the resources actually available. The States that succeeded in their industrial transformations were not necessarily those that spent the most, but those that were able to direct their resources towards the priorities that determined their future. This distinction is essential. The central question is not the absolute level of public spending, but its composition, its efficiency and its contribution to preparing for the future.
A strategic state must therefore distinguish between two categories of expenditure. The former correspond to the functions essential to the collective functioning: they ensure social cohesion, security, justice, education, health or the continuity of public services. The latter are more about strategic investment: research, innovation, critical infrastructure, energy, defence, digital technologies, training of the skills needed for the industries of tomorrow.
The French difficulty lies less in the existence of high public spending than in the growing gap between the size of the resources mobilized and the ability to sufficiently finance investments preparing for the future. For several decades, numerous public reports have highlighted this tension: France devotes considerable resources to its social and administrative model, but is struggling more to generate the necessary margins to invest in the technological, industrial and energy transformations that will determine its future competitiveness.
The restoration of these financial margins must therefore not be conceived as a policy of general reduction in public spending. It must be understood as a policy of strategic reallocation The objective is to reduce expenditure whose effectiveness has not been demonstrated, to simplify the overlapping mechanisms and to gradually redirect resources towards the areas where tomorrow’s economic power is at stake. This approach presupposes a profound change in the French administrative culture. A public policy should not only be evaluated at the time of its creation; it should be regularly reviewed in the light of its results. Schemes that do not achieve their objectives must be able to be reformed or abolished in order to free up resources for new priorities.
This logic of permanent evaluation is one of the characteristics of effective strategic states. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have often adapted their industrial policies according to the results obtained, redirecting their resources when technological or economic priorities have changed.
The budgetary issue also has a geopolitical dimension. In a world marked by competition between great powers, a state with limited financial margins necessarily sees its ability to react to crises and its freedom of strategic choice reduced.
Economic sovereignty therefore presupposes a form of collective discipline: each public financial commitment must be assessed according to its contribution to the fundamental interests of the country. This concerns in particular industrial, energy, scientific and military investments, but also international policies, which must be more closely linked to national economic and strategic objectives.
Restoring solid public finances does not therefore mean giving up on collective ambition. On the contrary, it is to create the conditions for its realization. A State that is unable to control its resources in the long term risks gradually becoming dependent on the financial constraints that limit its action. The real golden rule of the strategic state – based on a very strong political will – could thus be formulated simply: not to devote most of its resources to managing the present to the point of no longer being able to prepare for the future.
Sources in the box: Cour des comptes, La situation et les perspectives des finances publiques, Paris, Cour des comptes, various editions; Haut Conseil des finances publiques, Opinions relating to macroeconomic forecasts and public finances, Paris, various publications. F. Souty, « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2025) », op.cit. F. Souty, « South Korean Industrial Policy: op.cit. F. Souty, « The Recomposition of the Taiwanese Industrial State since China’s Accession to the WTO », op.cit. Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, op.cit., in particular the developments devoted to the financing of strategic investments and European competitiveness.
B. Reforming the State to regain efficiency, speed and responsibility
The industrial and technological reconquest does not depend solely on sectoral choices or the financial resources available. It is also based on a more fundamental condition: the state’s ability to decide, act and evaluate effectively.[62]
For several decades, France has accumulated converging diagnoses on the difficulties of its administrative organization. Successive reports on state reform, modernization of the administration or competitiveness have often identified similar problems: excessive complexity of procedures, multiplication of standards, insufficient evaluation of public policies and difficulty in holding the actors responsible for their implementation accountable.
This situation obviously does not mean that the French State is incapable of acting. The recent crises have shown the ability of the French administration to quickly mobilise considerable resources when a clear objective is assigned to it. It also has high levels of expertise in many fields, including scientific, technical and sovereign fields.
The problem lies more in the ordinary functioning of public action: a difficulty in prioritizing, simplifying decision-making processes and systematically measuring the results obtained.
However, in a world where economic competition is accelerating, the quality of public organization is becoming a direct factor of power. An industrial project that requires several years of additional administrative procedures may lose its advantage in the face of a foreign competitor capable of making decisions more quickly. An innovation that struggles to find its economic application due to a lack of effective coordination between research, funding and companies can be developed elsewhere. Administrative efficiency thus becomes a component of economic sovereignty with four essential modalities.
1. Moving from a managing state to a strategic state. The necessary transformation does not consist in reducing the State to its sovereign functions alone. Such an approach would be contrary to French economic history and to the lessons of countries that have succeeded in their industrial transformation.
Contemporary strategic states all have administrations capable of directing investments, supporting innovation and anticipating technological developments. The difference lies less in the size of the state than in its organization and its ability to concentrate.
The French challenge is therefore to change the administration from a logic mainly focused on the management of existing systems to a more results-oriented logic.
This includes strengthening the culture of evaluation. It should be possible to review any public policy on a regular basis in the light of specific objectives: what economic, social or strategic results have been achieved? Are the resources mobilized proportionate to the results? Should the schemes be maintained, reoriented or abolished?
This approach, which is widely present in several Asian and Anglo-Saxon economies, does not call into question the legitimacy of public action. On the contrary, it aims to strengthen its effectiveness.
2. Simplify without weakening the rule of law. The issue of administrative simplification occupies a central place in this transformation. France suffers from a gradual accumulation of rules whose initial justification may be legitimate, but whose piling up ends up producing counterproductive effects.
The proliferation of standards can discourage investment, slow down industrial projects and penalise small and medium-sized enterprises in particular, which do not have the same legal and administrative capacities as large groups.
Simplification should not, however, be understood as a blanket abolition of the rules. A modern economy needs a stable legal framework that guarantees security, fair competition, environmental protection and citizens’ trust.
The objective must be different: to build a regulatory environment that is more readable, more predictable and more proportionate to the objectives pursued.
In this perspective, France could draw inspiration from the steps taken by several countries that have sought to limit normative complexity while maintaining a high level of public requirements. The issue is not less state, but better state.
3. Rethinking the management of public services: from expenditure to performance. The issue of efficiency also concerns essential public services. Their quality is a determining factor in economic attractiveness and national cohesion. As Charles de Gaulle himself pointed out in the years 1958-1969 in his major speeches, schooling, health, infrastructure, justice and security are not just social or administrative policies. They are fundamental infrastructures of economic power. The difficulties encountered in certain public services remind us, however, that the size of the resources committed does not automatically guarantee the quality of the results. Efficiency also depends on organization, human resource management, innovation capacity and adaptation to real needs.
The management of recent crises, particularly health and climate crises, has shown the importance of an administration capable of anticipating. In a context of ageing populations, intensifying climatic events and rapid technological transformation, the State must invest more in prevention and preparedness rather than in crisis response alone.
This includes, for example, the adaptation of public infrastructure to new climate risks, the digital modernisation of administrations or the ability of essential services to maintain their operation in exceptional situations.
4. Restore accountability in public decision-making. Finally, the reform of the State presupposes a reflection on the responsibility of public decision-makers. An effective organization must make it possible to make decisions, but also to assume the consequences. The multiplication of control procedures can sometimes lead to a dilution of responsibility: everyone applies a rule without a clearly identified actor being really responsible for the final result.
Conversely, states that succeed in their industrial transformations generally combine autonomy of action with responsibility for results. The Japanese, Korean or Taiwanese economic administrations have often operated according to this logic: setting precise objectives, providing appropriate resources and evaluating the performance obtained.
France must rediscover this culture of strategic responsibility. In-depth reform of the state does not therefore mean weakening public power. On the contrary, it is the condition for it to regain its capacity for action. In today’s global competition, a state that is too slow, too complex or insufficiently evaluated risks gradually losing the means to defend its interests. The strategic State of the twenty-first century must be a State capable of making decisions more quickly, learning from its results and concentrating its resources on essential priorities.
C. Mobilising savings, private capital and territories in the service of industrial reconquest
The reconstruction of French and European industrial capacity cannot be based solely on public resources. Even a state with sound finances cannot finance the necessary investments in strategic areas such as energy, digital, defence, health, infrastructure or advanced industrial technologies on its own. International experience shows that effective strategic states do not replace markets and companies. They set the conditions for private capital, innovation and entrepreneurial initiative to contribute to long-term goals.
China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have all developed mechanisms to direct a significant part of their financial resources towards sectors considered to be priorities. These mechanisms take different forms depending on the country: public development banks, sovereign or semi-public funds, tax policies favourable to productive investment, support for technological ecosystems or close coordination between research and companies.
The European and French challenge is therefore less to artificially create a single model than to better mobilise resources that are already considerable but still insufficiently oriented towards strategic investment. Five modalities can be distinguished from the experiences observed outside Europe among our main Asian competitors but also in the United States.[63]
1. To further transform European savings into productive investment. Europe has a major paradox. It has one of the largest stocks of global savings, but an insufficient share of these savings is directed towards financing innovative companies, strategic infrastructure or industrial growth.
A significant part of European savings remains directed towards relatively liquid or low-risk investments, while developing companies, especially young technology and industrial companies, often encounter difficulties in accessing the financing necessary for their scale-up.
This situation is a major handicap in global competition. The U.S. has a financial ecosystem that can quickly finance high-growth technology companies. China also uses powerful public and private instruments to support its industrial champions.
Europe must therefore make progress in building a genuine market for venture capital, growth capital and long-term financing. The objective is not to reproduce the American model exactly, but to reduce a structural deficit that too often leads the most promising European companies to look elsewhere for the means of their expansion.
2. Promote the growth of French companies. The question of financing is linked to that of the size of companies. France has many successful, innovative and exporting companies, but it has more difficulty than many of its partners in developing a sufficient number of world-class companies.
This phenomenon particularly concerns medium-sized companies, which are nevertheless an essential element of German industrial strength and of several Asian economies.
French industrial policy must therefore pay particular attention to the transition from innovative SMEs to industrial companies with an international dimension. This step often requires significant capital, a sustainable investment capacity, an export strategy and appropriate support.
The challenge is not only to create more new companies, but to enable the most successful existing companies to grow, invest and keep their decision-making centres in Europe.
3. Rethinking the role of institutional investors. The major European institutional investors — insurers, pension funds, asset managers, banks — have considerable financial capacity. Their mobilization in the service of productive investment is a major challenge.
However, this presupposes the creation of a sufficiently attractive and stable framework. Long-term investors need regulatory visibility, consistent rules and a better articulation between economic, financial and strategic objectives.
A modern industrial policy cannot therefore ignore the financial dimension. The ability to finance a technology or infrastructure itself becomes a factor of sovereignty.[64]
4. Territories as actors in industrial reconquest. Nor can reindustrialisation be conceived solely from the central administrations. Foreign experiences show the importance of territorial ecosystems bringing together companies, research centres, training establishments and local authorities.
Germany illustrates this logic with its regional industrial networks. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have also developed specialized hubs capable of concentrating skills, infrastructure and companies around strategic sectors.
France has many territorial assets: major scientific centres, engineering schools, infrastructures, historical industrial know-how. But these resources are sometimes insufficiently coordinated.
Industrial reconquest therefore presupposes a territorial approach based more on intelligent specialisation: each territory must be able to make the most of its own skills and contribute to a coherent national strategy.
5. To rediscover a culture of risk and investment. Beyond financial instruments, a cultural dimension should not be neglected. Major industrial transformations are always based on a collective ability to accept risk, to invest in projects whose results are not immediate and to support innovation.
France has a remarkable scientific and entrepreneurial tradition. But it sometimes suffers from an excessive preference for legal and financial security to the detriment of productive risk-taking. The objective is not to reduce the protections necessary in a modern economy, but to better value those who invest, innovate and create new industrial capacities.
The French and European industrial reconquest will therefore be based on a renewed alliance between public authorities and private initiative. The state must set priorities, ensure a stable framework, and address strategic market failures. But it can only succeed by relying on entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and territories. The real question is no longer only that of the capacity of the state – and its political leaders – to act, but that of its ability to lead the whole of economic society around a common project.[65]
6. Towards a Composite Strategic State Capacity Index: A Comparative Assessment. The comparative analysis developed throughout this study provides the basis for a preliminary assessment of the different models of the Strategic State that have emerged since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. A table of that tentative strategic state composite index is presented in appendix 5. Without claiming to establish a formal econometric ranking, it is nevertheless possible to evaluate their strategic capacity through a coherent set of indicators covering the sustainability of public finances, the continuity of industrial policy, innovation performance, administrative effectiveness and the overall coherence of public policies. This comparative framework, summarised in the following table, suggests that long-term economic strength depends less on the overall scale of state intervention than on the State’s ability to define stable strategic priorities, allocate resources consistently over time and assess policy outcomes on a continuous basis. The proposed Composite Strategic State Capacity Index should therefore be regarded as an analytical tool designed to facilitate international comparison rather than as a definitive statistical ranking.
D. Rebuilding a Europe as an economic power, with the Member States: from regulation to strategy
The future of France’s economic power is now inseparable from that of the European Union. In a world structured by competition between the United States, China and the major emerging economies, no European state, including France or Germany, has all the necessary means to compete in the decisive sectors of the twenty-first century. The European question is therefore no longer limited to that of the completion of the internal market. It now concerns the Union’s ability to transform its potential economic power into a real strategic capacity.
Since its creation, the European Union has built its model around an essential idea: the pooling of markets and the guarantee of common rules should promote growth, innovation and prosperity. This approach has produced considerable results. The single market is one of the most integrated economic areas in the world and remains a major advantage for European businesses. However, the international environment has changed profoundly. The current economic competition is not so much between isolated companies as between economic groups capable of coordinating their industrial, technological, financial and commercial policies.
The United States is now openly mobilizing its public instruments to support strategic sectors. China combines industrial planning, financial support, technology policy and control of its value chains. Several Asian powers have also developed national strategies to secure their critical capabilities. Europe must therefore complement its historical model based on openness and competition with a real strategic capacity. Five perspectives can be proposed here.
1. To go beyond an exclusively regulatory conception of European power. One of the major challenges for the European Union lies in the balance between its remarkable normative capacity and its still insufficient capacity to produce global industrial and technological champions. Europe has become a recognised regulatory power. Its standards often influence international practices in many areas. This ability is a real asset, particularly in terms of consumer protection, health safety, the environment and digital regulation.
But an economic power cannot be based solely on the ability to set rules. It also needs companies that can innovate, invest and compete globally. The risk would be to become mainly a space for consumption and regulation for technologies developed elsewhere. The real European ambition must be to combine normative excellence and productive capacity.
2. Organise a genuine European industrial strategy. The 2024 Draghi Report clearly identified this need by stressing that Europe must simultaneously reduce its dependencies, accelerate innovation and improve its competitiveness.[66] The challenge is no longer just to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market, but to create the conditions for a sustainable European economic power.
This development implies better coordination between national and European policies. Strategic sectors — energy, digital, defense, semiconductors, disruptive technologies, health, critical infrastructure — require significant investments and a long-term vision.[67] The European Union already has several instruments for this purpose of coordination: research programmes, the European Investment Bank, important projects of common European interest, sectoral industrial policies. But these tools sometimes remain fragmented and insufficiently articulated around a real strategic doctrine.
The challenge is therefore not necessarily to always create new systems, but to improve the coherence and effectiveness of existing ones.
3. France and Germany: a special responsibility. In this European transformation, France and Germany occupy a special place. Their ability to define common guidelines remains essential for the economic and political balance of the Union.
France has specific assets in several strategic sectors: nuclear energy, defence, aeronautics, space, infrastructure, public research. Germany retains an exceptional industrial power, particularly in capital goods, automobiles, mechanics and industrial technologies. Their complementarity could be one of the driving forces behind a new European strategy. But it presupposes overcoming certain traditional divergences: relationship to energy, design of industrial policy, role of the State, financing of strategic investments.
Europe will not be able to become an economic power if its main economies remain hesitant about the common objectives to be pursued.
4. A strategic, open but less dependent Europe. Building a new Europe as a power does not mean seeking autarky. International openness remains a key source of prosperity and innovation. The issue is that of over-dependence in sectors where the loss of control could affect European freedom of decision-making.
European economic sovereignty must therefore be conceived as a capacity for choice, without necessarily imposing a federalism whose dominant tendency of the last fifty years has not produced the expected or prophesied results. It involves diversifying supplies, securing certain value chains and retaining essential skills. This approach also presupposes a change in European trade policy. The opening of markets must remain a fundamental principle, but it cannot be dissociated from an analysis of international power relations and sometimes asymmetrical competition practices.
5. A new ambition for the Europe of the twenty-first century. Europe still has many advantages: a large market, a highly qualified population, first-class scientific research, developed infrastructure and significant industrial capacity.
Its main challenge is that of strategic coherence and autonomy.[68] It must now learn to use its economic, financial, regulatory and diplomatic instruments in the service of common power objectives. The challenge is therefore not to choose between the market and strategy, between openness and protection, between competition and industry. It consists of building a model capable of associating these dimensions in a new equilibrium.
Let us note incidentally that the reflection on European economic sovereignty has been profoundly renewed over the last twenty years. Far from constituting a homogeneous current, it is today the result of the convergence of several complementary intellectual traditions. The first extends the French legacy of the strategic state and economic modernisation, from Jean Monnet, Jacques Rueff, Louis Armand, Pierre Massé, François Bloch-Lainé and Simon Nora to the Draghi report of 2024, which constitutes, in many respects, a transposition at the level of the Union. A second approach, illustrated in particular by Jean Tirole, Philippe Aghion and Frédéric Jenny, shows that competition, innovation and industrial policy are no longer opposed to each other but must be thought of together in a context of global geo-economic rivalry. The analyses devoted to Asian trajectories, developed in particular by Chalmers Johnson, Alice Amsden, Robert Wade and Sebastian Heilmann, highlight the decisive role of institutions capable of directing investment, innovation and industrial transformations in the long term. Finally the work of Mario Draghi, Enrico Letta and Jean Pisani-Ferry underlines the need for the European Union to regain a capacity for strategic action adapted to new forms of international competition. The present study is part of this movement of doctrinal renewal while defending a complementary idea. European economic sovereignty cannot be based on the Union’s instruments alone in the long term. It also requires Member States to become strategists again, capable of restoring their public finances, modernising their administration, simplifying their regulatory environment, supporting productive investment and concentrating their resources on a limited number of industrial, technological and scientific priorities in the long term. European strategic autonomy thus appears less as an additional transfer of competences than as the result of a more effective articulation between a more strategic Union and more efficient States.[69]
The real European question for the coming decades will be this: does the European Union want to remain primarily a major trading and regulatory power, or does it also want to become an industrial, technological and geopolitical power? The answer will largely determine its place in the world.
6. The necessary overstepping of the European « regulatory power » for a geoplitic reason. The European Union has long built an essential part of its economic power around its ability to produce standards. This approach has been a real strategic advantage: thanks to the size of its internal market, Europe has often succeeded in imposing international standards in areas as varied as consumer protection, health safety, the environment or digital regulation.
However, this normative power now reaches its limits when it is not accompanied by a sufficient capacity for execution and strategic projection. A standard is only an instrument of power if it can be effectively applied, monitored and complied with by the economic actors concerned.
Recent developments in European digital regulation illustrate this difficulty. The Digital Markets Act (DMA), adopted to rebalance the relationship between large digital platforms and corporate users, is a major initiative aimed at limiting certain gatekeepers’ behaviours and preserving a more competitive digital environment. Similarly, the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) aims to prevent companies benefiting from foreign state support from benefiting from undue advantages on the European market. These instruments show an important realisation: the European Union can no longer consider global competition as a perfectly balanced game between players subject to the same rules. However, their effectiveness depends directly on the Union’s political and institutional capacity to ensure their implementation. Faced with American digital groups with considerable financial, technological and legal power, or Chinese companies that sometimes benefit from a national environment strongly supported by Beijing’s public policies, European regulatory capacity alone may seem insufficient.[70]
The difficulty is therefore not only legal. It is geopolitical. An economic power capable of imposing rules must also have the means to enforce them. This requires better coordination between the European institutions, Member States, competition authorities, trade instruments and diplomatic capacities.
The challenge for the European Union is thus to move from an essentially defensive conception of regulation to a more strategic approach. European economic law must continue to protect competition and consumers, but it must also take greater account of the realities of global competition, technological dependencies and power relations. Europe will not be able to sustainably preserve its economic model if it becomes only an area where other powers come to market their technologies subject to compliance with European standards. It must also once again become a space capable of creating, financing and developing its own industrial and digital capacities.
Box 7
Ten priorities for a French and European strategy for industrial reconquest by 2035
The industrial and technological reconquest cannot be the result of a succession of dispersed sectoral plans. It presupposes an overall vision that makes it possible to concentrate public and private resources on the capacities that condition the economic autonomy, competitiveness and freedom of decision of France and Europe.
The challenge is not to try to produce everything on European territory, an impossible objective in an interdependent world economy. It involves identifying areas where over-reliance would create strategic vulnerability and preserving the skills needed to act.
Ten priorities appear to be essential.
1. Restore a competitive and sovereign energy strategy. Energy is the foundation of any industrial policy. France must make the most of its historic nuclear advantage, accelerate the modernization of its sector, develop future technologies and guarantee companies sustainable access to abundant, decarbonized and competitive energy. The energy transition cannot succeed against industry; it must be conceived as a lever for reindustrialisation.
2. Rebuilding critical industrial value chains.. France and Europe must identify the sectors in which external dependence constitutes a major risk: electronic components, digital technologies, energy equipment, defence industries, health, strategic materials and certain essential food productions. The priority must be the mastery of decisive capabilities rather than the illusory search for total autonomy.
3. Make innovation a major economic driver. French and European scientific excellence must be transformed more into industrial creations. This requires a more effective rapprochement between public research, companies, private funding and training of the skills needed for disruptive technologies.
4. Enable European companies to scale up. Europe has many successful companies, but it is still struggling to produce enough groups capable of competing globally in strategic sectors. The growth of SMEs and mid-caps must become a central economic priority.
5. Directing savings more towards productive investment. Europe has considerable financial resources but are not sufficiently mobilised to finance innovation, industry and strategic infrastructure. The development of a genuine European market for long-term financing is an essential condition for future competitiveness.
6. Reform the State to strengthen its capacity for action. A strategic state must be able to decide quickly, evaluate its policies and concentrate its resources. Administrative modernization, the simplification of procedures and the accountability of public actors must become instruments of economic power.
7. Build a European regulatory framework favourable to competitiveness. Regulation remains necessary to ensure confidence and market balance. But it must be evaluated more in the light of its economic, industrial and technological effects. The goal is not fewer rules, but rules that are better designed, simpler and more compatible with innovation.
8. Rebalancing European competition policy. Competition remains essential to economic dynamism. But it must take more account of the reality of global competition between ecosystems supported by public strategies. Europe must preserve its internal market while allowing the emergence of players capable of competing with the major economic powers.
9. Develop genuine European digital sovereignty. Artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity and data are now strategic sectors. Europe needs to move from a predominantly regulatory position to a greater capacity for innovation, financing and production.
10. Regain a long-term strategic culture. The main condition for success remains political and institutional. Industrial transformations require continuity, stability and the ability to regularly evaluate the results obtained. A national and European strategy cannot be effective if it changes according to political cycles or immediate constraints.
France and Europe still have many assets to succeed in this reconquest. But the experience of the last twenty-five years shows that no economic power maintains its positions in the long term without a permanent effort to adapt. The central question is therefore not whether France and Europe still have the means to bounce back. They have them. It is a question of whether they will be able to mobilize them with sufficient coherence, consistency and determination.
Conclusion
Since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in December 2001, the nature of the world economy has changed profoundly. Globalization has not led to the disappearance of states; On the contrary, it has revealed the decisive role of powers capable of organizing their resources, supporting their strategic companies and preparing for long-term technological transformations.
This evolution does not constitute a total break with the lessons of economic history. The fundamental question of the economic power of nations has accompanied political and economic reflection for several centuries. In The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Adam Smith already analyzed the conditions that allow a society to increase its prosperity in the long term: the efficiency of trade and private initiative, but also the existence of solid institutions, appropriate infrastructure, an efficient education system and a framework that allows productive capacities to develop.[71] The real question has therefore never been that of a simplistic opposition between the market and the state. It is that of the efficient organization of a nation’s resources. Successful powers are those that know how to create the conditions for individuals, companies and institutions to produce, innovate and prepare for the future.
China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India have each adapted their public instruments in accordance with their own political and economic traditions in order to preserve or strengthen their industrial, digital and technological capacities. What they have in common is not a permanent intervention by the State in the economy, but an ability to identify priorities, to concentrate resources in the long term and to coordinate public and private actors around strategic objectives.
This evolution leads to a redefinition of the very notion of the strategic state. This is not characterised by the multiplication of public interventions, regulations or support mechanisms. It is defined by its ability to prepare for the future, to prioritize essential issues and to effectively mobilize available resources.
The European Union and France still have considerable assets to meet this challenge, as has been pointed out, and yet they are in danger. They have first-rate scientific skills, solid infrastructure, global companies in several sectors, an exceptional industrial and technological tradition and a capacity for innovation that remains important. But these advantages have been gradually weakened by several decades of underinvestment in certain strategic areas, by insufficient anticipation of the transformations linked to the rise of China, by persistent European fragmentation and by particular French difficulties in the organization and effectiveness of public action.
The industrial and technological reconquest cannot therefore be the result of a simple return to the policies of the past. It presupposes a profound transformation of public decision-making methods. France must regain its ability to choose, agree to prioritize its priorities and concentrate its resources more on the sectors that condition its economic, energy, digital and strategic autonomy. This requirement also implies a fundamental clarification regarding public finances. A state that wants to prepare for the future must preserve the resources necessary for investment. Fiscal consolidation is not only an accounting obligation; it represents a condition of sovereignty. The lessons learned from the major phases of French economic modernization show that periods of successful transformation have always been based on an ability to direct resources sustainably towards clearly defined objectives.[72]
In a context of increasing financial constraints, each public expenditure must be assessed in terms of its contribution to the country’s fundamental interests. International policies of solidarity or influence retain their justification when they meet clearly identified objectives of stability, security, access to resources, economic cooperation or strategic influence. But they cannot be permanently dissociated from the primary need to restore national capacities for investment, modernization and protection. The reform of the State is therefore a strategic priority. It does not mean a weakening of public power, but on the contrary its reconstruction. The State must be able to decide more quickly, to evaluate its policies more, to simplify its functioning and to concentrate its resources on the missions that really condition the collective future.
Europe must also initiate this transformation. Its historical model based on the single market, competition and regulatory power has produced considerable results. But it must now evolve. Europe does not suffer from an excess of rules; It suffers from an imbalance between its ability to produce standards and its ability to produce power. The Digital Markets Act and the regulation on foreign subsidies show an important awareness: the European Union is gradually understanding that global economic competition is no longer played out only between companies, but between ecosystems supported by national or continental strategies. However, a norm only becomes an instrument of power if it can be effectively applied and defended. Faced with American digital companies with considerable financial and technological power or Chinese players benefiting from a highly structured economic environment by the State, Europe must complement its regulatory power with a real strategic, industrial, financial and geopolitical capacity.
The objective is therefore not to choose between openness and protection, between market and strategy, between competition and industrial policy. The challenge is to build a new balance that will allow Europe to remain open while preserving the capacities that are essential to its autonomy and prosperity.
France still has the means to reconquer it. It maintains sectors of excellence, remarkable human skills and strong positions in several essential areas. But it will only be able to preserve them by rediscovering a culture of strategy, long-term investment and collective efficiency. Economic history teaches that nations do not retain their power by inheritance. They are constantly preparing, organising and renewing it. In a world where the economic, technological and geopolitical balance of power is rapidly being recomposed, France and the European Union must now move from a logic of permanent adaptation to a real desire for projection.
The challenge is not to build a more present state; it is to build a more efficient state, capable of choosing and acting. It should also be stressed that the strategic State is not the one that intervenes the most; it is the one that best prepares for the future by concentrating its resources on a limited number of priorities that are constantly evaluated.
Appendix 1
Comparative Chronology: The Transformations of Strategic States Since 2001
| Period | China | United States | Japan | South Korea | Taiwan | India | EU/France |
| 2001-2008 | WTO entry, industrial rise, export policy | Opening up and then the first concerns about economic security | Koizumi reforms, industrial repositioning | Innovation, rise of global chaebols | Transformation to advanced technologies | Gradual economic reforms | Lisbon Strategy, EU enlargement |
| 2009-2015 | Made in China 2025, technological rise | Return of progressive industrial policy | Abenomics, Society 5.0 | Digital economy, semiconductors | Innovation, semiconductors | Make in India | Limited European industrial policy |
| 2016-2025 | Dual circulation, economic security | CHIPS Act, IRA, Bidenomics | Economic security, Rapidus | K-Semiconductor Strategy | Technological resilience | Production Linked Incentives | Green Deal, DMA, Draghi |
Appendix 2
The major French reports on state reform and competitiveness (1963-2025)
| Report | Date | Primary diagnosis | Recommendations | Action taken |
| Bloch-Lainé report | 1963 | Administrative modernisation needed | Rationalization of the State | Partial reforms |
| Armand-Rueff Report | 1959-1960 | Liberating the French productive forces | Removing economic rigidities | Reforms of the 1960s |
| Nora Report | 1967 | Modernizing Public Management | Administrative Streamlining | Lasting influence |
| Court of Auditors reports | 1990-2025 | Public spending, administrative efficiency | Evaluation and reform | Limited implementation |
| Draghi Report | 2024-2025 | European dropout | Investment, innovation, competitiveness | Ongoing |
Appendix 3
Main indicators of the French and European industrial stall
since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2025)
| Indicator | France | Germany | Italy | Spain | European Union | Evolution since 2001 | Comment |
| Share of manufacturing industry in GDP (%) | ≈ 10 | ≈ 19 | ≈ 16 | ≈ 12 | ≈ 15 | Sharp decline in France | A particularly marked French industrial dropout. |
| Share of industrial employment (%) | ≈ 9 | ≈ 18 | ≈ 15 | ≈ 11 | ≈ 15 | Overall decline but less in Germany | Resilience of the German Mittelstand. |
| Manufacturing trade balance (€ billion) | -80 to -100 | +220 to +250 | +40 to +60 | Close to balance | deficit vis-à-vis China | Reversal after 2001 | France concentrates a large part of the European industrial deficit. |
| Exports of manufactured goods (% GDP) | ≈ 12 | ≈ 37 | ≈ 28 | ≈ 22 | — | Growing gap | Weak internationalization of French industry. |
| R&D expenditure (% of GDP) | ≈ 2.2 | ≈ 3.1 | ≈ 1.5 | ≈ 1.5 | ≈ 2.2 | 3% target not met | German advantage confirmed. |
| Private R&D expenditure (% of total) | Low | very high | Averages | Averages | — | French delay | Insufficient innovative mid-caps. |
| Productive investment by enterprises (% GDP) | Medium | High | Medium | Medium | — | Stable Spread | Better German investment capacity. |
| Number of exporting enterprises | ≈ 145,000 | > 300,000 | >,220,000 | > 160,000 | — | Sustainable gap | Weak French export fabric. |
| Number of mid-caps | ≈ 5,800 | > 13,000 | ≈ 8,000 | ≈ 7,000 | — | French structural weakness | One of the main differences with Germany. |
| Industrial productivity (EU index = 100) | ≈ 100 | ≈ 125 | ≈ 105 | ≈ 95 | 100 | German advantage | Correlation with investment. |
| Full cost of industrial energy | High | Medium | High | Medium | — | Sharp rise after 2022 | Impact on competitiveness. |
| Nuclear electricity production (% production) | ≈ 65-70 | 0 | 0 | 20 approx. | — | French asset insufficiently valued | A central question of industrial policy. |
| Dependence on Chinese imports (rare earths, batteries, solar panels, etc.) | very high | high | high | high | very high | Sharp increase since 2001 | Strategic vulnerability. |
| Chinese direct investment received | important | very important | moderate | moderate | high | Acceleration after 2010 | Strengthening FDI control after 2020. |
| Total public expenditure (% GDP) | ≈ 57 | ≈ 49 | ≈ 50 | ≈ 46 | ≈ 49 | France far above | A question of the effectiveness of the expenditure. |
| Public debt (% GDP) | ≈ 114 | ≈ 63 | ≈ 137 | ≈ 101 | ≈ 82 | Strong divergence | Reduction of industrial policy margins. |
Appendix 4
Evolution of the share of manufacturing industry in GDP since China’s entry into the WTO (2001-2024/2025)
(as a % of GDP, orders of magnitude according to data from the World Bank, OECD, national statistical institutes)
| Country | 2001 (China WTO entry) | 2010 | 2024-2025 | Evolution since 2001 | Strategic reading |
| China | ~32% | ~31% | ~27-28% | Slight decrease but exceptionally high level | Maintaining a massive industrial base despite the rise of services; technology upgrading strategy (Made in China 2025, economic security) |
| South Korea | ~25% | ~28% | ~25-26% | Stability at a very high level | Model of an export strategic state: maintenance of an advanced industry (semiconductors, batteries, automotive, defence) |
| Taiwan | ~27% | ~30% | ~30% approx. | Relative Strengthening | Very strong industrial specialization in critical technologies, particularly semiconductors |
| Japan | ~22% | ~21% | ~20% | Limited recoil | Relative deindustrialization under control thanks to the maintenance of technological and industrial champions |
| Germany | ~22% | ~22% | ~19% | Moderate decline | Export industrial model preserved until the recent energy crisis |
| Italy | ~19% | ~17% | ~15% | Decline but maintenance of a dense industrial fabric | Specialization in industrial exporting SMEs |
| United States | ~15% | ~12% | ~10-11% | Apparent sharp decline | Relative deindustrialization compensated for a long time by technological, financial and digital domination; reindustrialization initiated since 2022 (CHIPS Act, IRA) |
| India | ~16% | ~15% | ~13-14% | Relative stagnation | Historical difficulty in industrializing quickly; new strategy (Make in India, PLI) to strengthen the manufacturing base |
| France | ~16% | ~12% | ~9-10% | Sharp decrease | Marked industrial stall since 2001: loss of productive capacity, manufacturing trade deficit |
Annexe 5
Composite Strategic State Capacity Index (Author’s Assessment)
| Criteria | France | Germany | Japan | South Korea | Taiwan | China |
| Public Finance Sustainability | ★★☆☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★☆ |
| Industrial Policy | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ |
| Innovation Capacity | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ |
| Administrative Effectiveness | ★★☆☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ |
| Strategic Policy Coherence | ★★☆☆☆ | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ |
| Overall Strategic State Capacity Index | 2.4 / 5 | 4.1 / 5 | 4.7 / 5 | 4.8 / 5 | 4.8 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 |
Methodology. The Composite Strategic State Capacity Index proposed by the author is a comparative analytical tool designed to assess the ability of major economies to formulate, finance and implement long-term development strategies. It is based on five complementary dimensions: (1) public finance sustainability (public debt, fiscal balance, budgetary sustainability and investment capacity); (2) industrial policy (continuity of industrial strategies, manufacturing value added, productive investment and support for strategic sectors); (3) innovation capacity (R&D expenditure, patent activity, research excellence, technology transfer and the emergence of innovative firms); (4) administrative effectiveness (quality of public governance, regulatory stability, administrative efficiency, speed of decision-making and effectiveness of public expenditure); and (5) strategic policy coherence (coordination between industrial, competition, trade, technology, energy and education policies, continuity of strategic priorities and capacity to anticipate structural economic change). Each dimension is assessed on a qualitative five-star scale using a broad set of internationally recognised indicators and databases (OECD, World Bank, IMF, European Commission, UNIDO, WIPO, IMD, World Economic Forum, among others), together with the comparative analyses developed throughout this study. The index is not intended as a formal econometric ranking, but rather as a comparative analytical framework highlighting the strengths, weaknesses and long-term trajectories of different models of the Strategic State since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
[1] This article is part of a research program devoted to the contemporary transformations of the industrial state in the face of globalization, the recomposition of value chains and the emergence of new policies of economic sovereignty. It builds on the work previously devoted to the industrial policies of China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India, as well as studies on European competition policy, economic sovereignty, foreign investment control, foreign subsidy control and the regulation of digital markets, which will be referred to throughout this study, which represents the final stage of the programme under consideration.
[2] On the French tradition of major reports devoted to the economic, industrial and administrative modernization of the State, see in particular: Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand (pres.), Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, rapport présenté par le Comité institué par le décret n° 59-1284 du 13 novembre 1959, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vol., 98 p. and 279 p.; Simon Nora (rapp.), Rapport sur les entreprises publiques, rapport du Groupe de travail du Comité interministériel des entreprises publiques, Paris, La Documentation française, 1968, 132 p.; Louis Gallois, Pacte pour la compétitivité de l’industrie française, rapport au Premier ministre, Paris, La Documentation française, collection « Rapports officiels », November 2012, 68 p.; Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A: A competitiveness strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 69 p., and The future of European competitiveness. Part B: In-depth analysis and recommendations, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 328 p. These reports, written in different economic and institutional contexts, respond to a common question: how to adapt public institutions, productive structures and economic instruments of the State to changes in the international environment in order to preserve growth, competitiveness and economic sovereignty. For an analysis of the French version of the recommendations of the Draghi report: François Souty, » The European Union, the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness: what inspiring strategic consequences for France? », Le Diplomate Média, 9 December 2025, 14 p.
[3] François Souty, « The recomposition of India’s industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): From manufacturing emergence to geoeconomic power », Le Diplomate Média, 09 July 2026, 38 p.; F. Souty « The recomposition of the Taiwanese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): From globalisation to economic security« , Le Diplomate Média, 1 July 2026, 33 p.F. Souty, « The Transformation of South Korean Industrial Policy (1997-2025): From the Asian Crisis to Economic Security », Le Diplomate Média, 24. June 2026, 40 p.; F. Souty, « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy in the face of the Chinese challenge and American digital domination (2001-2025): from the Developmental State to the Economic Security State« , Le Diplomate Média, 17 June 2026, 53 p.; F. Souty, « The return of the strategic state: the industrial policy of the United States between power, national security and technological competition (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 11 June 2026, 45 p.; F. Souty, « Industrial and Competition Policy in China since 2001: A Strategic Convergence at the Antipodes of the European Model? « , Le Diplomate Média, 3 June 2026, 43 p.
[4] Deepak Bhattasali, Shantong Li and Will Martin (eds.), China and the World Trade Organization: The Impact of WTO Accession, Washington D.C., World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003, XVIII-188 p.
[5] Nicholas R. Lardy, Integrating China into the Global Economy (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2002), 210 p.; Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2007, 528 p.
[6] Barry Naughton, The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 1978 to 2020, Mexico City, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2021, 102 p.; Sebastian Heilmann, China’s Political System, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, 392 p.
[7] State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Made in China 2025, Beijing, State Council, 2015; Barry Naughton, The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 1978 to 2020, op.cit.
[8] Ibid.
[9] The strategy of « dual circulation » (shuang xunhuan, 双循环) is a major, logical concept, which resembles a good adaptation of the United States’ approach, which applies a type of « dual circulation », less restrictive than the Chinese version, without ever mentioning it. Officially formulated in the summer of 2020, this strategy aims to articulate an « internal circulation » (development of the domestic market, technological upgrading, innovation and industrial autonomy) with an « external circulation » based on maintaining trade openness and integration into global value chains. It was gradually introduced as the new paradigm for the development of China’s economy from the July 30, 2020 meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. See in particular Xinhua News Agency, « China proposes new development pattern of ‘dual circulation’« , Beijing, 9 August 2020, unpaginated dispatch, available on the official website of the Xinhua agency; Xinhua News Agency, « Key meeting emphasizes dual circulation as feature of deeper-level reform, » Beijing, September 2, 2020, reported by People’s Daily Online, September 3, 2020; People’s Daily Online, « China’s new ‘dual circulation’ development paradigm, » Beijing, March 29, 2021, unpaginated article; Xi Jinping, « Speech at the Symposium of Entrepreneurs, » July 21, 2020, reprinted by Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily as « Xi Jinping on new development pattern, » November 13, 2020; Daniel H. Rosen, China’s Dual Circulation Strategy, New York, Rhodium Group, Issue Note, November 24, 2020, 16 p. ; Justin Yifu Lin, « Dual Circulation and China’s Development, » Frontiers of Economics in China, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2021, pp. 30-34.
[10] Dani Rodrik, Industrial Policy for the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2004, 57 p.; Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, London, Anthem Press, 2013, 260 p.
[11] François Souty, « The Return of the American Strategic State: From Liberal Globalization to Economic Security (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, June 11, 2026, 45 p.
[12] Congressional Research Service, Semiconductor Manufacturing and the CHIPS Act of 2022, Washington D.C., CRS, 2023; Congressional Research Service, Inflation Reduction Act of 2022: Energy and Climate Provisions, Washington D.C., CRS, 2023.
[13] François Souty, « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy: from industrial competitiveness to technological sovereignty (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 17 June 2026, 53 p.; Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Industrial Policy in Japan, Tokyo, METI, various editions.
[14] F. Souty, « The Transformation of South Korean Industrial Policy (1997-2025): From the Asian Crisis to Economic Security », Le Diplomate Média, 24. June 2026, 40 p.
[15] François Souty, « The recomposition of the Taiwanese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): from globalization to economic security », Le Diplomate Média, July 1, 2026, 34 p.; OECD, OECD Economic Surveys: Chinese Taipei, Paris, OECD Publishing, various editions.
[16] François Souty, » The recomposition of India’s industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): From manufacturing emergence to geoeconomic power », Le Diplomate Média, 09 July 2026, 38 p.
[17] European Commission, European Union Competition Policy: General Report on the Activities of the European Union, Brussels, Publications Office of the European Union, various editions each year; Jacques Pelkmans, European Integration: Methods and Economic Analysis, Harlow, Pearson Education, 2006, 496 p.; François Souty, Droit et politique de la concurrence de l’Union européenne, Paris, Montchrestien, coll. Clefs, 2013, 4th ed., 160 p.
[18] Anu Bradford, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World, New York, Oxford University Press, 2020, 424 p.
[19] François Souty, « Competition law and policy in Europe in 2025: A review of the first year of the von der Leyen II Commission », Le Diplomate Média, 24 March 2026, 33 p.; F. Souty, « European Digital Markets Act, competition policy and sovereignty: Geopolitical consequences and strategic impact of the law on the digital economy », Le Diplomate Média, 04 February 2026, 26 p. ; F. Souty, « Defense Industries, European Union Competition Policy and United States Antitrust: Legal Asymmetries, Industrial Issues and Strategic Autonomy » Le Diplomate Média, April 14, 2026, 24 p
[20] Enrico Letta, Much More Than a Market: Speed, Security, Solidarity. Empowering the Single Market to Deliver a Sustainable Future and Prosperity for All EU Citizens, report presented to the European Commission, Brussels, April 2024, 147 p.; Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A: A competitiveness strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 69 p., including developments on the investment gap, innovation and critical technologies.
[21] On the financial markets – and the very serious lack of European competitiveness vis-à-vis the United States in the market for financial data that drives these financial markets – see in particular our article from our stay in Brussels at the European Commission, and our assignment to the antitrust directorate of the financial markets from 2018 to 2021: François Souty, « Financial Markets and Competition: Transatlantic Geopolitics of Market Data Markets « , Le Diplomate Média, 20 May 2026, 49 p.
[22] The change in European industrial policy took place from 2020 onwards, under the combined effect of geo-economic tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, the ecological transition and the rise of concerns about economic security and technological sovereignty. V. European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, to the European Council, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. A New Industrial Strategy for Europe, COM(2020) 102 final, Brussels, 10 March 2020, 24 p. ; European Commission, Updating the 2020 New Industrial Strategy: Building a Stronger Single Market for Europe’s Recovery, COM(2021) 350 final, Brussels, 5 May 2021, 23 p. ; Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 393 p. ; Enrico Letta, Much More Than a Market. Speed, Security, Solidarity. Empowering the Single Market to Deliver a Sustainable Future and Prosperity for All EU Citizens, Brussels, Council of the European Union, April 2024, 147 p. ; Donato Di Carlo, Kathleen R. McNamara and Manuela Moschella, « The New Politics of EU Industrial Policy: From the Regulatory State to a Transformational State, » Governance, vol. 39, n° 1, January 2026, p. 43-68. This work highlights the gradual transition of the European Union from a « Regulatory State » model, focused on competitive discipline and internal market integration, to a « transformational State« , based more on public investment, vertical industrial policies, value chain resilience, technological sovereignty and innovation. economic security.
[23] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Op.cit., see in particular the developments devoted to the investment gap, innovation and critical technologies; on the specific variations of the Draghi report for France, see François Souty, » The European Union, the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness: what inspiring strategic consequences for France? », Le Diplomate Média, 9 December 2025, 14 p.
[24] European Commission, European Chips Act, Brussels, European Commission, 2023; European Commission, Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI), Brussels, various papers; on the recent evolution of European law towards a more active industrial policy, see also Love Rönnelid, « Can There Be Effective Industrial Policy on the EU Internal Market? The Role of Law in a Time of Geopolitical Competition », in The EU Charting its Course in a Geopolitical World, Cham, Springer, 2026, p. 77-100. The geopolitical perspective of competition will force the EU to review part of the competitive software whose effectiveness is tending to reduce or even deteriorate: see F. Souty « The geopolitical limits of the European anti-foreign subsidies regulation », Le Diplomate Média, 21 January 2026, p. 20.
[25] Direction générale du Trésor, L’industrie française: situation et perspectives, Paris, Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de la Souverain industrielle et numérique, various editions; Patrick Artus and Marie-Paule Virard, La France sans ses usines, Paris, Fayard, 2011, 280 p.
[26] See references note 3 above.
[27] Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, Alain Villemeur, Is French Industry Stalling?, Paris, Eyrolles, 2018, 240 p. ; Marcel Fratzscher, The Germany Illusion: Between Economic Success and Social Failure, London, Macmillan, 2018, 240 p.
[28] Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, 352 p.
[29] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A: A competitiveness strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 69 p.; The future of European competitiveness. Part B: In-depth analysis and recommendations, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 328 p., esp. developments on the European investment gap, the technology gap, strategic dependencies and the need for a new industrial or post industrial policy, i.e. digital policy as successfully developed by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
[30] French Government, France 2030. An investment plan for the France of tomorrow, Paris, General Secretariat for Investment, October 2021, 52 p.; see also General Secretariat for Investment, France 2030: annual monitoring report, Paris, SGPI, various editions. The programme, initially endowed with €30 billion and then increased to €54 billion in its overall budget, targeted in particular the sectors considered strategic: energy, innovative nuclear, hydrogen, semiconductors, health, aeronautics, space, digital technology and food. Nevertheless, the priorities suffer from great incoherence, particularly in the nuclear field and more generally in the energy sector due to artificial environmental constraints or inconsistencies (suspension of the nuclear programme and abandonment of the objectives of national nuclear energy sovereignty for several years, ban on thermal vehicles and obligation to use electric vehicles while the supply of nuclear electrical energy is greatly reduced, Wind energy plan is highly consuming due to intemittencies, etc.
[31] Pierre Rosanvallon, L’État en France de 1789 à nos jours, Paris, Seuil, 1990, 370 p.; Jean-François Sirinelli (ed.), La France de 1945 à nos jours, Paris, PUF, collection « Nouvelle Clio », various editions.
[32] François Bloch-Lainé, Pour une réforme de l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1963, 256 p.; Simon Nora, Rapport sur les entreprises publiques, Paris, La Documentation française, 1968, 132 p.; Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vols.
[33] François Bloch-Lainé, Pour une réforme de l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1963, 256 p.; Simon Nora, Rapport sur les entreprises publiques, Paris, La Documentation française, 1968, 132 p.; Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vols.
[34] France Stratégie, The Evaluation of Public Policies: Issues, Methods and Practices, Paris, France Stratégie, various works; Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, 352 p.
[35] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A: A competitiveness strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 69 p., and Part B: In-depth analysis and recommendations, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024, 328 p.; F. Souty, « The Draghi Report and the Conditions of French Economic Recovery », op.cit..
[36] Sources for Box 2: Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vols.; François Bloch-Lainé, Pour une réforme de l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1963, 256 p.; Simon Nora, Rapport sur les entreprises publiques, Paris, La Documentation française, 1968, 132 p.; Louis Gallois, Pacte pour la compétitivité de l’industrie française, Paris, La Documentation française, 2012, 68 p.; Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, Brussels, European Commission, 2024.
[37] Court of Auditors, The nuclear power sector: industrial capacities and skills, Paris, Cour des comptes, 2020, 227 p.; Jean-Marc Jancovici, Climate Change Explained to My Daughter, Paris, Seuil, 2009, 112 p.
[38] Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices (OPECST), La flotte nucléaire française à l’époque des choix, report by Christian Bataille and Claude Birraux, National Assembly No. 4428 – Senate No. 667, Paris, National Assembly – Senate, July 2011, 222 p.; Court of Auditors, L’arrêt et le démantèlement de la centrale nucléaire de Fessenheim, communication to the Finance Committee of the Senate, Paris, Court of Auditors, October 2020, 139 p.; National Assembly, Commission of Inquiry to Establish the Reasons for France’s Loss of Energy Sovereignty and Independence, Rapport présenté au nom du Comité d’enquête, Report No. 998, presented by Mr. Raphaël Schellenberger, Paris, National Assembly, 6 April 2023, 372 p.; Academy of Sciences, Production d’électricité nucléaire : un élément essentiel de la transition énergétique, Paris, Institut de France, 2023, 48 p.; RTE, Futur de l’Energie 2050. Résultats principaux, Paris, Réseau de transport d’électricité, October 2021, 640 p.
[39] François Souty, « The return of the American strategic state: from liberal globalization to economic security (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 11 June 2026; François Souty, « Chinese competition law and the recomposition of the Chinese industrial state (2008-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 29 April 2026.
[40] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, op. cit. ; Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, 352 p.
[41] Ministry of the Armed Forces, Revue nationale stratégique 2022, Paris, DICOD, 2022, 64 p.; F. Souty, see the articles cited on the transformation of industrial policies in China, United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India and the emergence of the strategic state, at note 3.
[42] Cour des comptes, La situation et les perspectives des finances publiques, Paris, Cour des comptes, June 2024, 182 p.; Court of Auditors, Annual Public Report 2025, Paris, Court of Auditors, March 2025, 672 p., in particular the developments devoted to public finances, the modernisation of public action and the efficiency of administrations; OECD, OECD Economic Surveys: France 2024, Paris, OECD Publishing, May 2024, 142 p.; OECD, OECD Economic Surveys: France 2021, Paris, OECD Publishing, June 2021, 150 p.; France Stratégie, Soutenabilités! Orchestration et planification de l’action publique, Paris, France Stratégie, 2024, 286 p.; International Monetary Fund (IMF), France: Article IV Consultation – IMF Staff Report, Washington D.C., International Monetary Fund, 2024, ca. 90 p.
[43] See our articles on the changes in industrial policies since 2001 of China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India cited in note 3.
[44] See the reports already cited by Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, François Bloch-Lainé and Simon Nora.
[45] Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Report on the Obstacles to Economic Expansion, op.cit. ; Conseil d’État, Simplifier la loi, étude annuel, Paris, La Documentation française, 2016, 454 p.; OECD, Regulatory Policy Outlook 2021, Paris, OECD Publishing, 2021, 236 p
[46] François Souty, « The Transformation of Japanese Industrial Policy », op. cit.F. Souty, « South Korean Industrial Policy, op.cit.; F. Souty, « The Recomposition of the Taiwanese Industrial State », op. cit..
[47] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, op.cit., in particular the developments devoted to the reduction of regulatory barriers and the improvement of European investment capacity; F. Souty, « The Draghi Report », op. cit..
[48] François Souty, « The Recomposition of the Chinese Industrial State since China’s Accession to the WTO (2001-2025) », op.cit.
[49] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, op.cit.
[50] Fabien Bouglé, Guerre de l’Energie, au cœur du nouveau conflit mondial, Paris, Editions du Rocher, 299 p.; Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, Sans transition. Une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie, Paris, Seuil, 2024, 480 p.
[51] François Souty, « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy since China’s accession to the WTO », op. cit..
[52] F. Souty, « Competition law and policy in Europe in 2025: A review of the first year of the von der Leyen II Commission« , Le Diplomate Média, 24 March 2026, 33 p.; F. Souty, « State aid, energy sovereignty and nuclear renaissance: The European Union to the test of the EDF case and state responses », Le Diplomate Média, 7 April 2026, 18 p. These two articles underline the alarming recent evolution of ecological and environmental prejudices that tend to predetermine certain decisions in the field of competition, normally based on criteria of economic analysis and European market integration that were intended to be objective, measurable and appreciable in the light of a relatively consolidated European case law. The environmentalist doctrine of the new Commissioner for Competition since 2025, Teresa Ribera, is likely to distort the competitive dynamic and the priorities of industrial and digital development based on very subjective criteria, as underlined by the treatment of nuclear energy.
[53] Francois Souty, « Financial Markets and Competition: Transatlantic Geopolitics of Market Data Markets », Le Diplomate Média, 20 May 2026, 49 p.
[55] Cour des comptes, The nuclear power sector: industrial capacities and skills, Paris, Cour des comptes, 2020, 227 p.
[56] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A, op.cit. ; Part B: In-depth analysis and recommendations, op.cit.
[57] Jean Tirole reminds us that competition is a powerful driver of efficiency, innovation and collective well-being, but that it cannot be considered an end in itself. In some situations, market failures, externalities, innovation or long-term challenges may justify targeted public interventions, subject to a rigorous evaluation of their results. This pragmatic approach makes it possible to go beyond the opposition between industrial policy and competition policy in order to seek their optimal articulation. V. Jean Tirole, Économie du bien commun, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Quadrige », 2016, spec. pp. 45-58, 99-117 and 397-423. This evolution is in line with the recent (albeit belated) analyses of Philippe Aghion. After having mainly focused on the role of competition as a driver of innovation and « creative destruction », he now insists on the need to better articulate competition policy, industrial policy and support for innovation in a context of increased geo-economic rivalry. In particular, he points out that China has been able to organise intense competition between national companies while at the same time making it part of an industrial strategy coordinated by the State, whereas Europe has long tended to oppose these two policies. V. Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction. Innovation, growth and the future of capitalism, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, 448 p., spec. pp. 73-118, 149-198, 271-327 and 371-418; Ph. Aghion, The Power of Creative Destruction. Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2021, spec. chap. 4 (« Is Competition a Good Thing? « ), chap. 8 (« Can We Bypass Industrialization? « ), chap. 14 (« The Investor State« ) and chap. 15 (« The Golden Triangle« ). finally, we should mention the former Chair of the OECD Competition Committee for thirty years, Frédéric Jenny, « Competition and Industrial Policies: Complementary Action for EU Competitiveness« , Journal of Competition Law & Economics, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2024, pp. 384-406.
[58] François Souty, « Chinese Competition Law: From the 2007 Anti-Monopoly Law to the Strategic Regulation of an Integrated Market Economy (2008–2025) »,Le Diplomate Média, 29 April 2026; F. Souty, « Industrial and Competition Policy in China since 2001: A Strategic Convergence at the Antipodes of the European Model? » Le Diplomate Média, 03 June 2026, 44 p. These two articles constitute an in-depth study of the two sides of China’s strategy since 2001, which the European Union, France or even Germany have absolutely not integrated into their international industrial strategies, at least until 2025. The European industrial and energy choices up to 2024 make it possible to underline this, particularly in the automotive and nuclear fields, and even more broadly in the energy sector, whose error has been further accentuated by the conflict with Iran.
[59] Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer, Competition Policy for the Digital Era, Brussels, European Commission, 2019, 132 p.
[60] Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vols. François Bloch-Lainé, Pour une réforme de l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1963, 256 p.
[61] François Souty, « The Draghi Report and the Conditions of French Economic Recovery », op.cit.; Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, op.cit..
[62] This section is based on the major Rueff-Armand, Bloch-Lainé, Nora, Gallois reports and on the principles already formulated upstream and in our multiple publications since December 2025.
[63] See our articles cited in note 3 supra.
[64] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, op.cit., in particular the developments devoted to the financing of innovation and the capital markets union.
[65] On the financial aspects that are decisive for competitiveness, in addition to the Draghi report already cited on numerous occasions, v. Enrico Letta, Much More Than a Market, Report to the European Council, April 2024, 147 p. European Investment Bank, Investment Report 2023/2024: Transforming for Competitiveness, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union, 2024, 400 p.
[66] Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness. Part A: A competitiveness strategy for Europe, op.cit.. ; Part B: In-depth analysis and recommendations, op.cit.
[67] Enrico Letta, op.cit.
[68] See in particular Jean Pisani-Ferry, The Road to European Sovereignty. Strategy in the Age of COVID-19, Bruegel, Policy Contribution, n° 16/2020, Brussels, Bruegel, 2020, 16 p.; id., various works devoted to European economic sovereignty, strategic autonomy and economic governance of the Union (2021-2024). The author usefully highlights the need to strengthen the Union’s capacity for economic action in a context of growing geopolitical rivalries. However, its analysis favours a response largely based on a deepening of the common European instruments. The present study considers, for its part, that the reconquest of competitiveness also presupposes a profound modernization of national policies: simplification of standards, reindustrialization, improvement of the efficiency of public spending, strengthening of research, productive investment and innovation. European strategic autonomy thus appears to be the result of an effective articulation between a more strategic Union and Member States that have once again become fully capable of exercising the essential functions of the strategic State.
[69] This doctrinal evolution is mainly organized around four major currents of thought. The first corresponds to the French tradition of the strategic state and economic modernization, illustrated in particular by Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Paris, Fayard, 1976, 642 p.; Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, Rapport sur les obstacles à l’expansion économique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1960, 2 vols.; Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l’anti-hasard, Paris, Gallimard, 1965, 292 p.; François Bloch-Lainé, Pour une réforme de l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1963, 256 p.; Simon Nora, Rapport sur les entreprises publiques, Paris, La Documentation française, 1968, 132 p., to which can be attached, at the EU level, Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, Brussels, European Commission, September 2024. The second current is that of the economics of competition, innovation and growth, represented in particular by Jean Tirole, Économie du bien commun, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Quadrige », 2016; Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction. Innovation, growth and the future of capitalism, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, 448 p.; id., The Power of Creative Destruction. Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2021; Frédéric Jenny, « Competition and Industrial Policies: Complementary Action for EU Competitiveness« , Journal of Competition Law & Economics, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2024, pp. 384-406. The third is the theories of the developer state and Asian industrial policies, developed in particular by Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle. The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1982, 393 p.; Alice H. Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant. South Korea and Late Industrialization, New York, Oxford University Press, 1989, 379 p.; Robert Wade, Governing the Market. Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, 438 p.; Sebastian Heilmann, Red Swan. How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China’s Rise, Hong Kong, The Chinese University Press, 2018, 352 p. Finally, a fourth current is devoted to European economic sovereignty, with Mario Draghi, supra; Enrico Letta, Much More Than a Market. Speed, Security, Solidarity. Empowering the Single Market to Deliver a Sustainable Future and Prosperity for All EU Citizens, report submitted to the European Council, Brussels, April 2024, 147 p.; Jean Pisani-Ferry, The Road to European Sovereignty. Strategy in the Age of COVID-19, Brussels, Bruegel, Policy Contribution n° 16/2020, 16 p., as well as his various works on European strategic autonomy (2021-2024). This study is part of this movement while defending the idea that the Union’s economic sovereignty cannot be built in the long term without a profound modernisation of the Member States themselves: restoration of public finances, administrative efficiency, simplification of standards, reindustrialisation, innovation policy and renewed articulation between industrial policy and competition policy.
[70] on the DMA, v. Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act), OJ L 265, 12 October 2022, pp. 1–66. Also, F. Souty « European Digital Markets Act, competition policy and sovereignty: Geopolitical consequences and strategic impact of the law on the digital economy », Le Diplomate Média, 04 February 2026, 26 p. This article already underlined the geopolitical limits in the effective application of this text, which is nevertheless major and very well constructed. On the SRF, seeRegulation (EU) 2022/2560 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market, OJEU L 330, 23 December 2022, pp. 1-45. Also, F. Souty, « The geopolitical limits of the European anti-foreign subsidies regulation », Le Diplomate Média, 21 February 2026, 20 p., which underlines the geopolitical issue from the title, which is far too neglected by legal writers and commentators.
[71] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776, 2 vols.; French translation by Germain Garnier, Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, Paris, Guillaumin, 1843, 2 vols.
[72] See in particular Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975, Paris, Fayard, 1979, 288 p.
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