As someone who has always been against austerity, I find France, with a national debt at 114% of GDP and a budget deficit of 5.8% of GDP, a conundrum. Despite years of denunciation from his left and far-right opponents that Macron has engaged in “ultraneoliberalism”, there hasn’t been any. Not on a macro level, anyway, where both French government spending (57.3% of GDP) and tax receipts (51.4% of GDP) are among the highest in the world, including social spending, which outpaces any of its European neighbours.

At the same time, it’s impossible to have spent the past decade in France without encountering the widely shared perception and accusation that public services are in decline. Doctors and nurses denounce a labour shortage in public hospitals; people who live in rural areas denounce the closing of rural train lines; students and academics denounce a lack of resources for public universities, many of which are dealing with outdated infrastructure, and for research.

Some of the responses to this aren’t strictly financial. Nearly every country in the world is dealing with a shortage of medical personnel, which in France has been exacerbated by caps on medical school admissions that were finally lifted in 2020. And over the past 25 years, France has seen an increase in urbanisation, from 76% to 82%. Maintaining the same level of transportation and other services to shrinking rural towns and villages would mean far higher spending per person than for those who live in cities, ultimately diverting resources from something (whatever, and wherever, that is) and raising a fundamental question of fairness. The French, for their part, see the downside to the concentration of policymaking in Paris and overwhelmingly want more decentralisation.

Nevertheless, somehow in a country that spends a greater percentage of its budget than any other on all of these areas combined, there’s not enough money for anyone, and most are – unlike their Nordic peers – to some extent, dissatisfied. And the debt and deficit, of course, spiral into unsustainable levels. What, then, is going on?

The far right blames immigration and promotes a spurious narrative that asylum seekers are to blame for the strain on social services and public resources. The centrist prime minister, François Bayrou, wants to nibble at the edges with cuts to everything, to find €44 billion a year in savings, culminating in the absurd proposal to do away with two public holidays (a self-destructive political act so outlandish that I originally, and wrongly, I guess, assumed it was only suggested to be sacrificed in figure negotiations). The left, for its part, somewhat more reasonably argues for taxing wealth, while in practice potentially extending the proposed tax increase even to people making over €20,584 a year and remaining unmoved by the legitimate complaint that self-employed workers, entrepreneurs, small business owners and startups are slammed by paperwork and the administrative costs of expanding.

In the midst of the disagreement over what to do about France’s finances – a debate that threatens to bring down the current French government when Bayrou holds a confidence vote on 8 September – almost nobody is having an honest conversation about the single largest component of the French government’s discretionary spending: the €211bn spent every year subsidising businesses to create jobs in a country where letting go of workers is difficult and costly, and where businesses are, as a result, hesitant to hire. France has created an unnecessarily rigid labour market (notice periods can reach up to two to three months), has ended up with an unemployment rate persistently higher than the EU average and salaries that are not progressing fast enough to keep anyone content, and spends €211bn (that is, more than on education) trying to compensate. If France instead pursued Danish-style “flexicurity”, how much of that €211bn might otherwise be split between cutting the deficit and boosting health, education and green energy infrastructure?

Let me get something on the record before I am inevitably misunderstood. Not every euro of this should be castigated: the French model of heavy state intervention in the economy is far from being misplaced. It’s one reason why, for all its problems, France maintains what may be Europe’s only “full spectrum” economy, from agriculture to AI. And if anything, it is proving to be more and more relevant as the order of the day; this has always been the way that China functioned, and it’s increasingly the way that the US is functioning.

Capitalism needs direction. As just one example, in undirected capitalism, we end up with a confounding situation where different geographies race to the bottom to draw investment in datacentres that are inevitably powered by new gas turbines and drain local water resources, rather than seeing regulation and incentives direct all of them to Iceland, where they could be powered by its more-than-sufficient geothermal energy (and the gains distributed).

In the deeply imperfect past, some of this “direction” was provided by internationally agreed rules and treaties, which allowed small states to be nimble and dynamic. This has given way to a new world where nations – or a club of nations – of sufficient size can be protectionist externally and thus allow for nimble dynamism and innovation within their own internal rules. France’s problem is thus one of scale. It, like every other European nation, is too small to provide such protective external walls – a task that must fall to the EU. At least, should European leaders finally accept that the old world they cling to is not coming back.

The EU cannot succeed in its current form in a world of power rather than rules, and where the US and China view geopolitics and economics holistically and don’t hesitate to throw their weight in one area behind their interests in another. The EU can, on the other hand, succeed if it adapts a classically French approach. It’s not just that France needs a wealth tax, it’s that the EU needs one; it’s not just that the French space agency needs more funding, it’s that the European Space Agency does; it’s not just that France should invest more in green energy, it’s that the EU as a whole needs energy independence through renewables.

The irony is that Europe won’t be pushed in this direction unless France has the heft to nudge it there. And to do that, France needs an economy that is performing and a political class capable of having an honest and long-term conversation, rather than scapegoating, gimmicks, or same old, same old.

Pham Thanh Hung, widely known as “Shark Hung”, has officially joined the board of Hyra Holdings – a pioneer in AI infrastructure, blockchain, and innovative investment technologies in Vietnam, as an independent member.

The announcement was made at the 2025 AGM in Hanoi in May of Hyra Holdings, the parent company of Hyra Tek JSC.

As a seasoned entrepreneur and a familiar face in Vietnam’s startup scene, Hung is poised to drive Hyra Holdings’ strategic expansion into AI and Blockchain sectors.

He is currently vice chairman of major real estate developer Cen Group and CEO of multiple companies including CenInvest, CenHomes, Cenland, CenValue, and Ngoi Sao Moi (New Star)

According to the company, Hung’s role will go beyond providing strategic oversight but also be instrumental in forging connections with global investment funds and instilling modern governance standards across Hyra’s tech ecosystem.

Also at the AGM, Hyra Holdings approved a plan to establish a venture capital fund named Hyra Combinator, valued at $500 million by 2030. The fund will focus on breakthrough sectors such as AI, Fintech, Blockchain, Quantum Tech, and will operate under a blended capital model.

Hyra Holdings was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Vietnam. It operates across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.

The company stated that by the end of 2024, its ecosystem had reached 1 million global users. Notably, Hyra AI surpassed 2 million connected devices in 205 countries, with a total compute power of 360,000 TFLOPS.

The company also announced the groundbreaking of Hyra Zone – a $30 million AI data center – and the opening of new offices in Singapore, Dubai, and the U.S.

Further data shows that Hyra Holdings was formerly known as CMC Holdings JSC, with Tran Nam Chung as CEO.

In 2022, the company stirred public attention when it announced the successful raising of $1.5 million in a Co-Founder funding round. According to the firm, these funds were allocated to the development of a digital ecosystem aimed at serving billions of users worldwide.

The company also outlined plans to launch various projects including a real estate exchange, a reverse auction system, and a banking system, with rollouts scheduled for 2022 and 2023.

CMC Holdings once set a bold goal of IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange by 2027, following a roadmap of seven funding rounds, including Co-Founder, Angel, Series A, B, C, PE, and IB.

Its digital ecosystem was expected to include Hyperas – a specialized platform for tokenizing and digitizing assets, Pindias – a platform for managing transactions involving digital assets, Divega – an e-commerce marketplace using a unique reverse auction model, and Rapital Bank – a digital bank designed to support high-volume global transactions.

Returning to Hyra Holdings’ current ecosystem, according to the website of Hyra Tek (Hyra Network), Hyra AI is the world’s first decentralized AI infrastructure operating on Layer-3 blockchain, combining verifiable compute networks and a fully on-chain decentralized governance mechanism (DAO).

This solution is introduced as a means for all nations, enterprises, and citizens to access and develop transparent and secure artificial intelligence.

Hyra Tek further stated that this achievement has enabled the company to rapidly expand to 200 countries, connecting over 2 million devices and generating stable monthly revenue of $100,000.