Europe says "you can't recycle a teabag." It says "kids under the age of eight can't blow up a balloon," decides "what shape our bananas have got to be," and restricts the power of vacuum cleaners. In 2016, Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, had colorful examples, sometimes invented out of thin air, to illustrate the supposed regulatory madness of the European Union (EU), ahead of the Brexit referendum.

Politicians may be the primary producers of such legislation, but they love to blame regulations as the symbols of the real or imagined excesses of an intrusive public power. "It's a theme that's very present in OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries, and it's interesting because it's apolitical," confirmed Anna Pietikainen, a specialist in regulatory policy at the OECD.

In France, too, excessive standards are an old political obsession, against which the present government recently decided to step up the fight, in response to the demands of the farming world. "There are 14 regulations on hedges," observed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday, January 26, in front of farmers who denounced them as a daily source of difficulties.

Contrasting "the France of common sense" with "the France of hassles," President Emmanuel Macron also promised, at his January 16 press conference, to put an end to "useless standards" and "complexities that discourage entrepreneurs, industrialists, shopkeepers, farmers, craftsmen and mayors."

"What's pissing you off?" asked Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire bluntly to local business leaders during a trip in central France on November 16, 2023. It was an allusion to former prime minister Georges Pompidou's famous reply to Jacques Chirac, then a young aide at his office, who handed him a stack of decrees to sign. "We've got to stop pissing off the French," he sighed. "There are too many laws in this country, it's killing us."

Is France, as it believes, the champion of churning out regulations? There is no international comparative study that objectively measures this. However, the various rankings published by the OECD and the Davos Forum show that France has become more competitive over the last 10 years, particularly in terms of regulations. "It's consensual to say that you're going to reduce standards," said Socialist MP Boris Vallaud.

Standards slow down innovation and the creation of wealth, poison the daily lives of people, and "make life miserable for the entrepreneur," argues a source at the Finance Ministry. Administrative complexity is said to cost businesses 3% of GDP every year, more than in other European countries. "There's this idea in France that you have to get through the complexity," asserted the office of the finance minister.

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