Getting by in France
A compatriot and colleague sent me the following angry email. Possibly written with all the bitterness of someone who has sold up everything in Britain to make their home in France and too late realised their mistake, it could be read as a classic piece of French-bashing. But I don’t think that’s the author’s intention and certainly is not mine in publishing it. I think it has wider implications. Read it first:
“Last year this reporter earned a stunning €1,919 for her words and pictures submitted to the excellent French News. Then, as a thoroughly fair sort of Brit, she felt she should register this lucrative enterprise with the State – not wishing to work on the Black and keen to contribute to this fine country.
“This, dear reader, was the beginning of a great mistake!
“Tax – of course - you declare it – no problem but then there is URSSAF – not a branch of the US military but the people who issue the Siret number you need to work independently in France and RSI another – pay us now outfit.
“As corny papers say “imagine my surprise” when the kindly folk of URSSAF demanded, in January, a whopping €1,333 leaving the correspondent a mere €586. Soak the rich eh – and the poor and struggling while you are about it too.
“Then in February another parasite invaded - RSI – which also want to gorge on whatever mean reserves of food this damaged body has, with a demand for €1,077.
“So far my freelance work has cost me €491 more than I have earned. So next year I plan to give up my hobby of supporting the Republic – it is better, and cheaper not to work at all.
“And of course the princely sum of €1,919 has already been added to the family’s income.”
I doubt this will be news to anyone who has moved to France and tried to set up some freelance work. We all have similar heart-wrenching stories which tend to be the stuff of ex-pat dinner-time conversations while enjoying a few glasses of excellent French wine – a “residents’ rant” blog would be soon over-loaded. There are in fact ways round the problem quoted above, but they are technical, long-winded, requiring huge amounts of time, effort and above all a good understanding of administrative French. Indeed many Chambres de Commerce provide induction courses (in English!) to help and explain the French system to the woefully ill-equipped Brits. But what interests me here is not the particular case but the wider implications of the naivety of so many British people (in whom I include myself) who set up here without understanding what ‘protectionism’ or ‘anti-competitive’ really mean in everyday life. Many French people consider us entirely, possibly dangerously mad.
My brother-in-law is an inspecteur du travail in the Limousin, and from time to time has to go out with the gendarmes on dawn raids against British residents who have, for example, set-up a gîte without going through all the administrative palaver. Or, a speciality in the Limousin, bought a small lake stuffed with carp which they then charge other British anglers to come and fish. Or an elderly lady who imagined she could buy antiques from those oh-so-tempting street markets and re-sell them to British neighbours and “friends who come round for tea”. How naive can you get? This is not Britain (which, by definition, all these people decided to leave) and in France an Englishman’s home is not his castle. My French family (and I suspect many others) get somewhat steamed about those who set up in France without thinking through the consequences, without really understanding what they are doing, often without really understanding the language. For like the language, the French learn their administrative system from the cradle: it’s second nature.
France is famous for its cuisine and its social protection – and just as there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you can’t have this high level of social protection without serious cost. Having a nanny state means paying the nanny: and even if the French complain about it, they accept it as a fact of life – just as an entirely matter-of-fact education inspector once explained to me that if I wanted to be paid for teaching English three hours a week at my local primary school I would of course have to pay an amount equal to five times “salary” in charges. She wasn’t particularly shocked and not at all embarrassed to tell me this – that’s just how life is and it’s naive to imagine otherwise. Which explains in part why the majority of young French people dream of becoming fonctionnaires, it may not be the best income but it’s a totally secure one, with every wrinkle and stress-factor of the administration taken care of. They reject with much manifesting horrors such as the Contrat premier embauche, seen as Contrat premier pas vers la jungle.
Indeed the author of the rant above began her diatribe with the words: “What the French Republic could learn from Zoology”, arguing that the “French Ministry of Finance could do well to study Darwin”. Again the arguments she puts forward are totally reasonable – from the British (Darwinian) point of view. But they ignore the fact that the French don’t like and are deeply suspicious of Darwin (usually misquoted in translation as advocating the survival of the strongest, since there seems no easy equivalent in French of the word “fittest”, which has nothing to do with strength, and in any case the phrase was not Darwin’s but Herbert Spencer’s. Darwin used it first in the 5th edition of “Origin of the Species” and then only reluctantly, usually in combination with his preferred “natural selection”) – indeed for many French people Darwin is mixed in with Malthus, jointly responsible for all that is wrong with the anglo-saxon world. Much French thinking, especially in the press, believes that nature, and especially human nature, is red in tooth and claw and for that reason should at all costs be avoided, not learnt from. As in 18th century gardening, the thought is still that nature must be tamed, pruned, ordered – in a word civilised, as proof of man’s superiority. The pinnacle of this civilisation, the proof man’s superiority is of course the French state – an entirely artificial construct which rains the benefits of education and health care on all, while simultaneously providing obligatory periods of leisure – things unknown in the jungle.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Whilst I agree that there can be no hiding place for people looking to dodge the payment of taxes, there are also many French people struggling with the endless paperwork and charges.
One small business owner I knew was forced to close down their premises for two weeks a couple of times a year to ensure the long term future of the firm was secure.
Another, a baker, ended up doing horrendous hours because he wasn’t able to afford to take on staff due to the costs of employing them.
And a Brit who started a successful keep-fit centre was advised to hide some of her earnings to ensure she stayed open, she couldn’t and so ended up closing down the gym which had proven popular amongst many local villagers.
These people aren’t looking to be the fittest or strongest, just provide a service or employ others, but they are caught up in a system that rewards established companies and organisations, including the civil service, to the detriment of many, many people.
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be the political will to change any of this, and so employment opportunities won’t be created, small businesses will struggle to stay open and villages will lose many shops and ultimately many of their younger people to bigger towns and cities.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
“My French family (and I suspect many others) get somewhat steamed about those who set up in France without thinking through the consequences, without really understanding what they are doing, often without really understanding the language.”
I can understand that, completely. Of course, most of the Brits going to live in France are of retirement age, unlike the majority of French poeple coming to live in Britain. And I don’t feel very optimistic about a country where the ambition of most young people is to work in the civil service or local government. But then France as I know it (and love it) would not be France without the distinctive features of the State.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Answering Craig’s point, being self-employed is clearly a problem in France, and one that is not talked about, particularly amongst those who think they might like to move here from Britain or elsewhere. On Michael’s point, while you are probably right that the majority of Brits coming here are still of (perhaps early) retirement age, I think it is less true than it was ten years ago: I meet more and more English people looking for a second career. Which of course is the other problem: in France few change careers, it is not part of accepted practice, yet.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I too saw the piece that you quote and I must confess it rather got up my nose. Whilst it’s certainly true that bureaucracy here can be tortuous and the cost of ‘going straight’ somewhat eye-watering, I really do dislike the patronising ‘its all so unreasonable’ attitude - as if the Brits have got anything to be superior about when it comes to social security systems - and also the rather nasty Darwinian allusions that you’ve commented on.
For a start, it’s not THAT difficult to navigate the system. I work as a freelance here and I’ve managed to make my way through URSSAF, RSI etc, albeit with certain amount of patience and persistence - and I’m someone with a pathological hatred of paperwork and an inbuilt suspicion of Authority; I even found URSSAF charming and helpful. And isn’t it pretty much a business basic, even for small enterprises, to get professional advice on such matters? In my case, a bi-lingual accountant qualified both in the UK and France has been a valuable ally.
As for the costs of being in business, OK, they’re higher than in the UK - but as you suggest, they help fund things like a health service that’s vastly superior to the UK’s crumbling NHS. You don’t get owt for nowt. If the genteel lady writer had bothered to do her homework properly, she’d have discovered that there are regime options available to suit low earners and the ‘portage’ system to simplify admin.
What her piece reveals I’m afraid is the still all-too prevalent Brit attitude that it’s OK to come over here and take advantage of the many things that France has to offer, without getting properly involved or contributing anything (I don’t count you in this Tim!). I’m with your in-laws on this one. It really gets my goat (ramene mon chevre??) when Brits come and set up gites on the black, behaving as if its perfectly alright to do so - and oh-so-frequently they’re the Daily Mail reading types who left UK because it’s full of immigrants all doing illegal jobs… oh, and those other Brits that simply set up parasite businesses, doing building etc for the former crowd. On the black of course. And none of them making any effort to speak French…etc etc, I’m sure you’ve heard it all before!
Sorry for the rant, but it’s a topic that gets me seriously angry. The point is, if you’re going to come and live here and earn a living here, it’s not like being on holiday and you have to find out what’s expected of you and make an effort to meet those expectations.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Well, Red, you put into words the subtext of what I was long-windedly trying to say. I particularly like the idea of people complaining about immigrants working illegally back home and then going off and doing the same thing over here. I don’t think it’s necessarily all the individual’s fault: I think a lot of the blame lies with the way we, back in 1976, were sold the idea of joining Europe. It was to be the Eldorado where we (all out of work at the time) could find work. I made a couple of BBC documentaries back then about guys on that trip - which a friend then made into a very succesful comedy series Auf Wiedersen pet. It does come as a shock to realise that Europe is not the level playing field politicians promised. While you are absolutely right that people should look deeply before they jump, I also think France is not geared up to free-lance workers, nor those who do several things: I have on my wall the letter sent to me by les impots when I had declared a 6-month translation job: M. King, it says, you have declared yourself to be writer. Now you are doing work as a translator. Explain yourself.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
What a nice claim to fame to be the inspiration behind ‘Auf Weidersen Pet’ - good one! You’re certainly right, sadly, about the non-level European playing field - it remains a travesty of the vision. And I don’t disagree about France not being freelance-friendly - you just have to figure out how to deal with it. The job description thing is particularly bewildering - ‘if you do this, you can’t do that’ - and I think very Gallic. You therefore have to deal with it in a Gallic way, which is basically to tell the fonctionnaires what they want to hear, or whatever’s going to best fit the box they want to tick. I don’t mean by this that you deceive, or evade paying your dues - you just have to present the truth (or the most relevant bits of it) in the way that’s going to cause least alarm to the bureaucratic mind. Having said which, I loved your story about the letter from les impots!
March 13th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This is free (freelance) advise. French politiciens showed the way: just create an “association loi 1901″. You will be allowed to do whatever you want, avoiding many bureaucratic gates: do business, sell and buy, make profit, create your job, etc (and even get subventions !). Of course, nobody will tell you the story, and if you ask, will deny, but the so called non-profit world is among the richest and a great source of jobs in France.
All you got to do in this gallic jungle is: know the rules and the way to twist them…
March 13th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Yes, I’ll vouch for that. The world of Associations in France is a growth industry, and having been president of one for a couple of years I agree they seem to get by very well with no rules at all. Good advice!