France‘s Recovery Hits Crossroads After Summer Soft Patch

Surveys of purchasing managers show the French manufacturing and services industries are barely expanding, lagging activity in Germany and the euro area. Growth stalled in the second quarter after averaging less than half a percent annually in the past three years, and unemployment is only slowly falling from a peak of 10.5 percent reached at the end of 2014.

The lackluster performance has prompted calls from the European Commission in Brussels and the International Monetary Fund in Washington for President Francois Hollande‘s government to accelerate the modernization of the nation‘s economy. For now, both those organizations see growth accelerating to about 1 percent in all of 2015, and economists say data from August and early September don‘t suggest differently.