In his televised speech Sunday night, Nicolas Sarkozy praised the German model of a good dozen times. The Head of State made an apology for Germany to justify its economic reforms – tax shield yesterday, the TFR reform, reinforcement of learning, social VAT, employment agreements competitiveness today and rule of budget or tomorrow. "Germany comes so often in political discourse that can be asked whether the president will not be a referendum on the German economic model," writes on his blog the deputy editor of Le Figaro Pierre Rousselin. Before voting, the French need to know what's behind the brilliant success of their neighbors across the Rhine.

Germany for the second straight year was the locomotive of the European economy in 2011, with growth of 3% after 3.7% in 2010. In comparison, France has recorded growth of 1.5% in 2010 and should reach painfully 1.7% in 2011. This strong growth has allowed Berlin to reduce its public deficit to 26.7 billion euros, or 1% of GDP. The deficit lights is five times higher. The other great success of Germany, is the dramatic decline in unemployment. The number of unemployed in Germany last year reached 2.976 million on average, the lowest level since the reunification of the country, and 263,000 fewer unemployed than in 2010. The unemployment rate in the country has crude dropped him in 2011 by 0.6 percentage points to 7.1% on average. In France, the opposite: the number of jobseekers rose by 152,000 last year and the unemployment rate is approaching 10%. At our defense, the French population is growing while that of Germany decreases.

The keys to success are known: a specialization in products where global demand remains strong (automotive, chemicals, capital goods, mechanical engineering), a significant number of medium-sized companies (between 250 and 5000 employees) called "Mittelstand" across the Rhine, a tradition and know-how in new markets, a training system in favor of including in business, the massive use of short-and a good social dialogue on wages and employment. "The secret of the German model, the industry, firm size, the co-decision and competitiveness," notes Jean-Claude Betbèze, chief economist at Credit Lyonnais, which does not hide his admiration for Economic Policy the country. Left to accept the painful counterparties.

Excessive wage compression German

For this coin has several setbacks. To restore its competitiveness, which had deteriorated sharply in the years following 1990 reunification, Germany has practiced under the leadership of the former Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a moderate wage policy in the early 2000. Policy that has increased sharply in 2003 and 2005 when launched an unprecedented series of reforms to the labor market more flexible. Known as the "Hartz" reforms including creating the mini-jobs, jobs that pay can not exceed 400 euros per month, which can be exercised in parallel on welfare or in more than one job "traditional".

Their goal is to encourage theoretical maximum of the unemployed to return to the world of work. Benefit to employers: "mini-jobs" are almost completely exempt from payroll taxes. Employers have tended to replace the mini-jobs to full-time classical contracts taxed, resulting in a sharp increase in part-time and an additional downward pressure on wages. Result: While Germany has expanded its exports increased between 2000 and 2010, but wages have declined in nominal terms (they have risen less than inflation). The median net monthly salary has lost 7.4% in 10 years across the Rhine, while the average annual wage increased by 10.8% in France.

"The compression of wages granted, if it were necessary because of the low productivity of the former East Germany, has gone much too far, deplores Ferdinand Fichtner, an economist at the research institute DIW (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung) in Berlin. This has affected the purchasing power of households and the share of consumption in GDP has contracted. Exports jumped and much faster than imports and Germany is now too dependent on foreign trade, "said he. We saw in 2009 at the height of the global economic crisis: German GDP fell 5.1% against a decline of 2.7% in France. And this year, while the euro area – which represents 40% of German exports – is on the brink of recession, the country's GDP expected to grow by only 0.3% according to the IMF.

A growing impoverishment of the population

The other side of the coin is a very strong impoverishment of employees. During the last decade, Germany has created 2 million jobs part time (and some full-time), while France has created 2 million full-time (and very few part-time). The proportion of part-time increased by one third across the Rhine in this period, while it remained stable in France. Germany is the fourth and part-time employees, including 19% (7 million) of mini-jobbers. Yet nearly 90% of these small jobs were classified low or very low wages (less than 9.76 euros gross per hour to the west and less than 7.03 euros per hour to the is). 20% of German employees are paid an hourly minimum wage below the French and 40% have a net monthly salary of less than 1000 euros.

The unemployed – 2.9 million people – are not better off. The last law passed by Schroeder, "Hartz IV", has in fact merged the long-term unemployment benefits and social assistance. Thus, since 2005, after a year of unemployment, the unemployed no longer receive an allowance of 850 euros, including housing assistance. 70% of German unemployed and live below the poverty line. More generally, Germany has 12 million poor (less than 940 euros a month, or 15% of the population against 13.5% in France. At the other end of the scale, hold 2 825 000 Germans, 6 million euros of assets, or 1% of the population who share a quarter of the country's wealth. "The policy of wage deflation conducted in Germany has led to an increase in income inequality at a speed never seen before, even during the shock of reunification after," denounced the International Labour Organization in a report published on 24 in January.

The ILO will even say that Germany is responsible for the crisis in the eurozone. "Improving the competitiveness of German exporters are increasingly identified as the structural cause of the recent difficulties in the euro area," said the UN agency based in Geneva. "In Europe, it created the conditions for a prolonged economic slump, because other countries are increasingly a policy of wage deflation even harder as a solution to their lack of competitiveness," said she . This view is shared in part, Ferdinand Fichtner. "Germany is of course not solely responsible for the debt crisis countries in the euro area, said the German economy. But it is true that the absence of inflation in Germany, due to the contraction of wages, has led the European Central Bank to conduct monetary policy too expansionary [low interest rates, note] for Greece, Spain, Portugal or Ireland. In these countries, access to easy credit Cheap and fed an artificial increase in wages and housing bubbles. "

The German model has, in the end, the virtues of which France would be right to draw, particularly in respect of industrial specialization, the ability of firms to be exported and enter new markets or the quality of dialogue social development. But every copy would be to bring down our social model, model once touted by Nicolas Sarkozy for his ability to have cushioned the shock of the global economic crisis.

The airline has grounded all its aircraft Saturday and canceled 447 flights, which affected nearly 70,000 passengers, and brought the conflict to a climax.

The unions are demanding salary increases and improved working conditions. They also challenge the strategy of the company to focus its international activities in the Asia-Pacific region. The company management wants it, remove a thousand jobs.

The immobilization of the fleet has forced Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Melbourne before the court, which ordered the company to resume flights and unions to end the strike.The judges have left them 21 days to resolve the conflict.

Qantas announced that flights would resume on Monday afternoon part.

"We are delighted that after 24 hours of chaos, common sense prevails again in the sectors of air transport and tourism in Australia", welcomed Bill Shorten, Deputy Treasury Secretary.

"I think Qantas has taken an extreme decision Saturday," she commented on Julia Gillard, head of government. "Without really inform the government and the passengers, she had pinned her to the ground. She did as she had other alternatives," she added.

The strike took place at the wrong time for the Australian government, which hosted this weekend the 21st Commonwealth summit in Perth.Seventeen heads of state and government would leave Australia with Qantas. However, they have done with other companies, assured the Prime Minister.

Concerns are growing stronger with the approach of the EU summit to be held this Sunday. Around 10 am, Paris lost 1.6%, London 1.3%, Frankfurt 1.5%. At the same time Milan fell by 1.8% and 1.3% in Madrid. The Nikkei of the Tokyo Stock Exchange finished Thursday's session lower by 1%, investors fear that the summit of the European Union this weekend does not solve the crisis in the eurozone.

These concerns were reinforced by the Wednesday night meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.The two leaders met for nearly two hours in Frankfurt around the future of the euro area. Nothing filtered out of the interview but the discussions have included the lending capacity of EFSF, the relief fund in the euro area, which must be set up to help countries in trouble. According to the German press, Berlin would be in favor of strengthening the EFSF to 1.000 billion euros, but more like Paris. In addition, Nicolas Sarkozy wants to transform this new instrument in the bank, which refused Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Rumors about the amount of its capacity should continue to circulate in the markets, which should make the stock markets volatile."As we approach the summit, nervousness increases and investors away from equity markets," said the note IG Market Analysis, adding that the latest results of companies from the United States are often disappointing and not conducive for optimism.

Including applications made by creative entrepreneurs of the self-reported basis, 41,697 companies were created last month, a figure up 7.5% from July, which was the worst month for a year and a half.

Excluding self-entrepreneurs, the increase reached 27.8% from one month to another, with 23,174 CVS-CJO creations.

The last three months, the cumulative number of start-ups fell by 9.1% over the previous period last year."The sectors that contribute most to this decline are supporting business and trade," INSEE said in a statement.

At 12 months, lower start-ups is 10.0%.

Germany is she about to let go of Greece? While Athens is struggling to secure new loans from its international creditors (EU, ECB and IMF), Berlin board behind the scenes on a possible bankruptcy of the country. "To stabilize the euro, it should no longer be short-term no-think about some options. Among them, there is an emergency orderly insolvency of Greece," he told the daily Die Welt Philipp Rösler published Monday, German Economy Minister and leader of Free Democrats, a partner of the CDU Angela Merkel in the ruling coalition. And these are not empty words.According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, the teams of the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, are working on the subject. The three options now to Greece.

Scenario rose: Greece gets new funding

In early September, the unexpected departure of Greece by the "troika" – the expert mission of donors to oversee the national accounts – has reinforced concerns about the country's ability to meet its commitments to reduce the deficit . Especially as social protest against the structural reforms is increasingly strong. Monday, taxis, tax agents, and customs were on strike. Despite the anger of the street, the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou pledged Saturday to hold unswervingly the rigorous efforts.Sunday, the Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, introduced new measures to save two billion euros, which will limit the country's deficit to 17.1 billion euros.

Satisfecit of Europe has announced the return in the coming days of the troika. It could agree to the payment of a further $ 8 billion of loans in the first bailout of Greece in 2010. Without this loan, Athens was bound to default. In addition, many uncertainties in the second aid plan of 160 billion euros to Greece, adopted on 21 July: the expected participation of the private sector is not yet defined, Slovakia is reluctant to vote for this agreement while Finland wants guarantees.And even if the finance ministers of the Eurogroup manage to overcome them Friday at a summit in Poland, Greece is by no means out of business. The new rescue plan is supposed to stabilize the economy until late 2014 that Hellenic. Or Greek debt is considered "out of control" … Greek by economists themselves. An opinion shared by many economists and political leaders in Europe. For them, bankruptcy is inevitable for Greece.

Scenario gray Greece bankruptcy but remains in the euro area

"With a debt of more than 160% of GDP in 2012, structurally high levels given the sustainable enhancement of sovereign risk, low growth potential and flexibility of the economy limited, the requirements of the budget surplus are presented in Greece just out of reach ", wrote in July in the magazine L'Expansion Jean-Pierre Petit, president of the Journal of the green economy. According to experts of the think tank Open Europe, Greece must be missing at least half the debt that it once again become unsustainable. Such a bankruptcy would obviously have implications for the country's major creditors, namely the Greek banks themselves, the ECB and European banks.

Hellenic banks hold about one quarter of the Greek public debt.As for European banks, including the French, they should be able to absorb the shock, as they are offloaded heavily in recent months of their assets Greek rulers. A partial default of Greece certainly provoke a violent shock to the world economy, but would be "easier to care" that if Lehman Brothers, said Patrick Artus, director of economic research at Natixis, quoted in an article in Le Monde dated June 22. The question is how the country itself can survive such a scenario.

Black scenario: Greece is bankrupt and out of the euro area

Certainly, a partial default of 50% would make government debt more sustainable. But in parallel, while the Greek banking system is likely to collapse. Not to mention that the decision would be evidence of lack of solidarity that exists in Europe. Under these conditions, we do not see why Athens would remain in the euro area.With a return to the drachma, the Greek government could use the weapon of devaluation, thus restoring its competitiveness in the export and thus revive its economy. It is also a way to reduce significantly the debt of the country, since the value of the assets would be reduced by 55% according to Natixis. But it will not be without negative consequences for Greece: the devaluation of the drachma and the need for monetization of public debt will create a persistent inflation, while the interests of sovereign debt markets will soar.

For the euro area, the cost seems a priori limited: Greece is only 2% of GDP. And now, the country in recession tend to dampen growth in Euroland. The output of Greece alone does not change much to the economic situation in the euro area including the "economic quality" could even be strengthened.Except that the event would undermine the ability of European leaders to manage economic crises through its members. Therefore, the markets would have no reason to believe in the financial strength of the euro. They will not hesitate to attack the debt of other countries considered fragile – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and even France, pushing up their borrowing interest rates to unsustainable levels. One by one, these countries could also be forced to leave the eurozone. Eventually, a failure of Greece could therefore lead to an outright explosion in the euro area. What would be worse for the world economy that the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

The group of telecom, entertainment and media identified in the first half EBIT (operating income, net of amortization of goodwill), to 3.36 billion euros, up 4, 6% at constant exchange rates, sales of 14.25 billion, up 2.4% and adjusted net income of 1.83 billion.

The market on average expected a turnover of 14.24 billion euros, an EBIT of 3.31 billion and adjusted net income of 1.73 billion, according to estimates by seven analysts.

"Despite a troubled economic and financial environment, our operational indicators are up," said Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Levy said in a statement.

"We therefore confirm our outlook annual adjusted net income in excess of 3 billion and dividend growth," he adds.

The stock closed Tuesday up 0.78% to 16.1750 euros, giving a market capitalization of 20 billion euros. Since the beginning of the year, it was down 19.9%.

The French economy stagnated in the second quarter according to the first estimate published Friday by INSEE.This cons-performance compromise in the eyes of many economists, the goal of a 2% growth this year.

For 2012, the government table at the moment of an increase of 2.25% of gross domestic product (GDP).

"It is likely that it will revise downwards the growth," admitted one source close to the president quoted by Les Echos.

The meeting scheduled for Tuesday between Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister François Fillon will be the source, including dedicated to "define the quantum of savings" in these necessary conditions for holding the objective of reducing the deficit to 4.6 % of GDP in 2012, after 5.7% expected this year.

Nicolas Sarkozy is to receive in the afternoon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the debt crisis and financial pressures in the euro area.

The Minister of Economy, Baroin, and his colleague in the Budget, Valérie Pécresse, must present Wednesday to president and head of government proposals for new savings and trade-offs on the new budgetary measures are expected on 24 August.

After rising 8.7% in 2010, prices stand at the end of June, up 7.4% year over year, said Century 21. But the volumes, they have decreased by 7.1%. And "whenever prices rose more than 3%, activity was down," the group.

The average price per square foot in France has reached 2,693 euros in the first half. And Paris, where prices stood at 15.6% year on year, it exceeded 8,300 euros.In one year, the average price per m2 in the capital has increased by more than 1,100 euros.

Century 21 is especially ahead of "disparities" between regions, six of them have suffered a decline in property prices over the past 12 months (Alsace, Aquitaine, Auvergne, Bourgogne, Limousin and Nord-Picardie).

In fact, says the network, with the exception of Paris, no region can escape the cycle in which rising prices too brutal causes a contraction of activity conducive to price moderation, promoting it back then volumes.

This sequence has been favored in recent months by rising interest rates, made between November and June of 3.35% to 4.30%.

"This rise has as its corollary an automatic deterioration of the purchasing power of households and real estate market will exclude a number of increasingly important to the French", says Century 21.

LOANS MORE EXPENSIVE AND LONGER

Thus, the share of under 40 in all acquisitions fell by nearly 15 points in one year.

For its part, the broker Empruntis.com finds that 15% of cases that were still to be financed in the fourth quarter of 2010 fail to anymore.

"Even if banks did not change their criteria for granting credit, equivalent income, but with a higher rate, the result is mathematics: some people now exceed the criteria of debt accepted by banks ( 33%), "summarizes Mael Bernier, spokesman for borrowing. com.

Very concretely, recalled last week Meilleurtaux.com for a monthly payment of 1,000 euros over 25 years without any, a purchaser can not buy more than 23 m2 in Paris, against 52 m2 in 2000.

Another consequence of rising credit: the average loan extends from 12 months in 19.8 to 20.1 years, according to Century 21.

These are signs of tensions now put forward by other professionals in the market: on the occasion of the publication of its new monthly barometer, Meilleursagents.com also finds a conjunction between higher prices and lower volumes, making he said the market "unreadable" for individuals.

"Fewer and less hurried, buyers pay a premium for quality goods or value of less than 250,000 euros, but they negotiate hard or sulk the rest," said Sebastien de Lafond, president of the broker, who even speaks of " soaring "prices on the left bank of Paris.

"The sellers do not understand the new market dynamics and camped on their position. The market is gradually but inexorably blocks," he adds.

According to Handelsblatt, citing industry sources, the deal should be signed Tuesday.

EADS, Airbus' parent company, and Hong Kong Airlines, owned 46% by HNA Group, the parent of Hainan Airlines, would not comment on the report.

Last week, Hong Kong Airlines said it would make announcements of orders at the Paris Air Show, which runs from June 20 to 26, including the Airbus A380.

At a conference Thursday at the show, Airbus had reported a firm order for ten A380s, representing $ 3.8 billion based on list prices, from a retail client identified.

An industry source said then that it was of the order of Hong Kong Airlines.

From January 2012, the European Commission will require airlines flying to Europe to integrate its licensing program for CO2 emissions, forcing companies to buy permits beyond a certain level of emissions .

Airlines around the world stood against it, brandishing the specter of a trade war and the weight that will represent additional costs for companies in poor countries.

"The goal of a return towards the consolidation of public finances is an urgent imperative to address our short-term problems," said Pedro Passos Coelho immediately after its official entry into functions.

Then headed by a minority Socialist government, Portugal has requested assistance in April of 78 billion euros from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because of its growing inability to finance its debt markets.

In exchange for this support, the country has committed to undertake austerity measures.

It will be led by a coalition of center-right after the victory of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Passos Coelho legislative elections of June 5

The new Prime Minister announced the creation of a board of public finance to oversee the implementation of the budget.

"Our priorities are clear: to stabilize public finances, help the needy, to grow the economy and create jobs," he said.

The government seeks to achieve goals "consistent" with the agreement reached with the EU and the IMF, which plans to reduce the budget deficit of 9.1% of GDP in 2010 to 5.9% this year.

The rescue of Portugal also provides for a higher taxes, cuts in spending and reform the labor code. These measures should lead the country into a recession than 2% of GDP both this year and in 2012.

The new finance minister, Vitor Gaspar, Tuesday was to meet officials of the EU and the IMF.

Before Portugal, Greece and Ireland have also received emergency aid from the EU and the IMF. Dive into a deep recession, Greece is again in turmoil because the budget targets set by the rescue plan developed in May 2010 were not met.