France’s contribution to unifying the European economy

The development of the French economy was strongly linked to some common features of the post-war period. In the internal framework, this meant, among other things, in addition to migration from agriculture to the industrial and service spheres, the increasing professional activation of women, especially younger women, and increased spatial mobility, moving from economically passive or declining areas to centres of dynamic growth, especially to cities or other places of major investment. This was accompanied by an increase in income and consumer demand, which in turn promoted sales opportunities for industrial and agricultural products and services. In foreign relations, however, we should mention above all the phenomenon of the international demonstration effect, consisting in the close observation of the technical, technological, economic, administrative and organisational achievements of countries that are leaders on a global or regional scale. And to imitate them – sometimes literally, more often – with a sensible adaptation to the specifics of internal structures. In the post-war decades, this resulted mainly in emulating the experience of the United States, to which the Second World War brought unprecedented advantages over the rest of the world economy. Except that France quite clearly – due to the psychological consequences of its diminished international prestige in favour of the USA – entered into various types of conflict with the Americans in relatively numerous cases, without abandoning its separate institutional or systemic solutions. In this respect, it differed from the always pro-American England, as well as Germany and Italy, which, for reasons that are otherwise perfectly understandable, had not been more self-confident in the long post-war period. Although it is worth noting that, as de Gaulle stated on several occasions, when it came to matters of the highest strategic importance, France always found common ground with American policy. In any case, the phenomenon of the rapid transfer – on a scale much wider than in the pre-war period – of the successful achievements of the economic powers, mainly the US, to all countries that were able to constructively adapt them to their needs, remains an obvious regularity.