The French financial newspaper, Les Echos, has an interesting article on why l'Escroc (and Vile Pin) are so upset with HP. The article is here and the google translation is here. What it boils down to is that l'Escroc & co came up with something that they called "pôles de compétitivité" last year where identified certain regions and technologies as being key to French economic success. One of the pôles selected just before everyone went off on their "vaccances" was the High Tech sector in Grenoble and it was based around a certain American company's labs and factories there. As a result HP's decision to cut a boat load of jobs in Grenoble rather destroys the "raison d'être" of the Grenoble pôle de compétitivité or rather it demonstrates that the whole theory was utter tosh.
If France were a place where high tech companies were queueing up to invest in then the fact that one company was about to lay off 1000 well trained employees and vacate the premises then this would be seen as an opportunity by other companies to snatch up a ready made labour force and the offices to house it. Of course as is demonstrably the case the queue of companies desperate to employ French high tech workers is approximately 0 companies long and hence HP's departure is rather painful. Les Echos quotes an FT article that says that the various fiscal and tax incentives, which the government would now like HP to pay back, are insufficient to counteract the "lack of flexibility of the French labout market and the 35 hour week" (my translation) and there is no doubt that HP is far from alone in that basic opinion.
Meanwhile, in what I see as proof that the government recognises that no foreign company will ever invest in France, the FT has an article based on a Les Echos interview (subscription required) with Vile Pin where he calls for 'economic patriotism', which isn't protectionism (honest guv!):
“I am absolutely convinced that France has exceptional assets and has nothing to fear from international competition. But our forces must by united, organised, and mobilised so that we have the will to win together, business chiefs, social groups, the state, and workers,” he said in an interview in Les Echos newspaper. French talk of economic patriotism has provoked concern at the European Commission and in international boardrooms, amid fears that Paris could be lurching back towards protectionism.
This summer, French politicians, including Mr de Villepin, warned PepsiCo, the US group, not to launch a hostile takeover bid for Danone, the publicly owned French foods company. The government is also drawing up a list of 10 strategic industries to be shielded from foreign ownership.
[...]Mr de Villepin contradicted Les Echos' assertion that Danone was a global company. “I do not believe it. Danone's bases are in France: its milk collection and water sources are in France. The culture of the enterprise and its management remain profoundly French,” he said.
Personally my "economic patriotism" extends about as far as wine and cheese, but despite that I'm doing my best. For example my local Auchan is offering entirely drinkable fizzy wine at €1/bottle and it is really hard to argue against being economically patriotic and not blowing €18 on three cases of the stuff.