Public Support in France

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, industrial policy has remained a very sensitive issue in France and has been very much present in economic and political debate, despite the fall in the volume of funding. Thus, the Economic Analysis Council set up by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in July 1997 to provide decision support for the government on economic issues, devoted one of its first reports to ‘industrial policy’ (Cohen and Lorenzi, 2000). The report came in the wake of the recognition that Europe had fallen behind the United States in terms of R&D, innovation (number of patents), and industrial renewal, and it was produced in the perspective of the main Lisbon Summit resolution, to make Europe ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy in the world’. This report highlighted, within a historical perspective, certain specificities of French industrial policy.