Veron said that he saw a “kind of a lack of continuity in the commitment of the Jospin team.”

And the Jospin team was not politically deceptive enough to sell the legislation in France, Veron said.

“The only way to reform in France is to say something and do another,” he said, calling it “reform by stealth.”

“France isn’t that different from the rest of Europe” in the number of hours worked per year, he said.

On average, Americans work 400 more hours per year that Europeans, he said, and if current trends hold the number will increase.

“It’s not French exceptionalism, maybe European exceptionalism or U.S. exceptionalism,” he added, to chuckles from the audience.

Even with the shortened work week, he said that France does not seem to be falling behind in terms of productivity.

“Basically, you have a tendency of this policy to lose productivity per worker and gain in productivity per hour,” he said.

The combination of these two trends “actually results in a high increasing productivity per capita.”

“I wouldn’t say French workers are the best in the world,” Veron said, “but there are mixed signals that go that way in competitiveness.”

The speech was held at the Center for European Studies and sponsored by the French Study Group and the Working Group on Social Democracy.