Top > Business > 2006 > November > 2006-11-02

France?s Economy and Future Riots

Will increased violence in France following the one-year anniversary in the country do much to hurt the economy of the European Union, or just France? Riots tend to have a negative effect on a country?s public image given the worldwide reach of the international media, but it is often the case that riots happen, they end, and then people recover. But if these largely immigrant-instigated outbreaks of violence become an annual, or even monthly or weekly occurrence, the negative effects would probably be multiplied.

France has one of the slowest economies in the original European Union economic community, and Germany isn?t doing too well either. Part of the problem affecting France, in relation to the immigrant riots, has to do with the fact that most of those who are rioting are uneducated, discriminated against, and unemployed ? or employed in dead-end jobs. The riots in France earlier this year over the passage of a jobs law didn?t improve France?s future financial outlook. But neither is France doomed in this regard.

In 2007 the French will go to the polls to select a new president, and both of the frontrunners in the race are pledging change of a sort which may help ease not only the riots but the economic causes of them. What Paris will do about the ethnic-religious aspect of the violence (the rioters are mostly Muslims, and mostly Arabs) remains to be seen, and policies dealing with them will undoubtedly affect how the French economy performs, and whether it grows or not.