Is France really the country where employees work “the least in Europe”?

“We must tell the French, we will have to work more […] to pay for our social system and our public service”launched Sunday evening Gérald Darmanin, former Minister of the Interior, on France 2. The current deputy from the North continues to insist that France is the country in which we “we work the least in Europe, despite the pension reform that we have made”. The elected official therefore proposes to “review the way we do our working hours”, “by removing an additional public holiday for example” or by deleting “really the 35 hours in the public service”.

In 2021, this idea was already put forward by Xavier Bertrand, president of the Hauts-de-France region who ensured that “we are the country in Europe that works the least”. Same observation in October 2021 by Emmanuel Macron who affirmed during the presentation of the France 2030 plan that “when we compare ourselves, we are a country that works less than others”. Is this (still) the case? Le Figaro examined data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).