Top companies living off state handouts

"CAC 40 is anti-employment," headlines Libération. In a major investigative report, the Parisian daily reveals that over the last five years, the top 40 of France’s most capitalised companies have significantly increased their profits while shedding close to 40,000 jobs. At the same time they have benefited from tens of billions of state aid in the form of tax exemptions. The daily deplores the fact that "industrial giants" who "devour state subsidies" clearly have no qualms "about lobbying for more market deregulation, while demanding major tax breaks from the state." Given that the cost of government support for these corporations has reached 172 billion euros per year, the daily argues that "we would do well to question the appropriateness of the use made of these funds in the current context of budgetary austerity and state ‘bankruptcy’."