Allons robots de la Patrie Le jour de gloire est arrivé...
From Reuters:
Hollande turns to robots, driverless cars to revive French industry
* Hollande says state can coordinate industrial revival
* Hard-pressed government will turn to private sector for bulk of funds
* France is a "country of inventors" and must remain so
By Nicholas Vinocur
PARIS, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Francois Hollande laid out a 10-year roadmap on Thursday to revive French industry by promoting new technologies to drive job creation, but which offered little public money from stretched state coffers.
The Socialist president, whose 2014 national budget next month will focus on curbing spending, vowed to turn back what he called a 'lost decade' of conservative rule in which some 700,000 jobs fled domestic industries.
But the scheme will rely heavily on private investment and the government will act mostly as a coordinator to spur growth in 34 priority areas, from driverless cars to electric planes and a new generation of high-speed trains.
"France is a nation of inventors, pioneers and producers," Hollande said, citing France's role in previous centuries and decades in developing technologies from the steam engine to hot-air balloons and rechargeable batteries.
"We have a duty to remain so," he added, nonetheless insisting the plan was not a return to the so-called "dirigiste" state-directed industrial policies of the 1960s and 1970s....MORE
