A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and of the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique (ENSAE), Karine Berger served in several capacities at the French Ministry of Finance (1998-2008) before joining an international credit-insurance group. She won a parliamentary seat in the French elections in June 2012 and was recently nominated Socialist Party Secretary for economic issues. Regarded as one of the rising stars of the French Socialist Party, she participates regularly in public and televised discussions on economic issues.
A graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Valérie Rabault works as an investment banker and has had a close-up view of the financial crisis. She has been a member of parliament (Socialist Party) for Tarn-et-Garonne since 2012.

How can France make its enterprises more competitive, so as boost economic growth? Can France afford to continue promoting an idealised image of innovative small-and-medium-sized businesses, faced with the giants of the CAC 40? What sort of policies would France have to adopt in order to really choose its entrepreneurs? Can the left succeed in implementing such policies?
Numerous misunderstandings cloud these issues: the French, unlike the Germans, are not familiar with their enterprises and are incapable of naming the leading small-and-medium-sized businesses in a given sector. A confused political debate further obscures things: the laissez-faire right favours competition to the detriment of innovation, while until recently the left traditionally criticised profit-making, which obviously hurt future investments — as the state of the electric-energy sector amply demonstrates.
Yet there is an alternative — and that is what this book presents. In the face of short-term strategies, which exacerbate globalisation and financial logic, the author urges the development and creation of long-term wealth.

• France has the capacity to progress economically: it possesses the necessary tools.
• The French Socialist Party’s unauthorised programme, which is certain to stir controversy — even within the SP.
• The authors’ previous work, Les Trente Glorieuses sont devant nous, sold more than 10,000 copies.