Looking past the tax on the “super ritch”, analysts have said that France's new budget may be the worst of both worlds. In substance, they say, it lacks the serious spending cuts which are needed to put the country on a path to sustainability.

At the same time, it does not feature the wave of stimulus that voters expected from their Socialist president, Francois Hollande.

The 2013 budget includes his infamous pledge to tax the super-rich at 75%. Hollande’s government says it will put France back on track to reduce its deficit to the benchmark 3% of GDP.

But at the same time, French workers who are watching factories close and unemployment climb say that while Hollande may have spared them the massive budget cuts that neighbours Spain and Italy are enforcing, they are going to see standards of living frozen.

The budget also represents a major backtrack for Hollande, because he won the presidency by campaigning against the kind of Europe-wide austerity championed by his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Now he is doing exactly the same. His electoral pledge was to spend the country out of recession, creating jobs and growth in the process – but it clearly can’t be done.

Economists say Hollande is just getting through with this budget and that drastically raising taxes does nothing to improve France's global competitiveness, which is fading fast. Business leaders complain he'll scare away both the rich and the investment the country desperately needs.

"France is sick from a model that isn't viable," said Guillaume Carou, CEO of Didaxis and president of the Club of Entrepreneurs, which represents 15,000 small businesses.

The French economy, the second-largest among the 17 countries that use the euro, has not grown for three straight quarters, the national statistics agency confirmed Friday. Its GDP stands at €1.8 trillion. Unemployment has been on the rise for more than a year and stands at 10.2%

If France doesn't drastically reduce its debt — which is more than 90% of its GDP — quickly, growth will likely continue to slide. Italy, Spain and Greece — which are using the crisis to modernise their economies — could eventually pull investment away from France. Could we see the same that happened to the UK post WWII happen to France? Could Europe’s ‘demolished’ countries rise from the ashes as Germany did and be the leaders in market reformation? It is an interesting notion.