Francois Hollande's false debate.

• Author: Zimmermann, Klaus F.

This issue is not France versus Germany. It is France versus the United Kingdom.

Competition between nations helps populations and entire economies to get in shape and improve their standard of living. But it is critical to go after the correct target. Pick the fight one and you may succeed. But pick the wrong one, and you set yourself and your supporters up for failure.

Francois Hollande has made Germany the target of his ambitions. That is in line with a presidential campaign where much of the real debate between the two main presidential contenders centered on the secrets of Germany's economic success--a rare occurrence in a country traditionally as proud as France.

However, in Mr. Hollande's conception, it is not the innards of the German industrial and labor strategy that matter. He has made the debate over austerity versus growth his preferred ground of engagement, positioning himself as the champion of growth. This has garnered him political support, from the United States all the way to Greece.

But in the real world of economic reform, abstract pronouncements about preferring "growth" matter very little to improving one's own country's economic fortunes. Mr. Hollande has, in effect, set up a false debate. A simple comparison between GDP statistics for Germany and France shows that the German government is obviously not "anti-growth."

To improve his own country's economic performance, the new French president must abandon the lofty heights of campaign rhetoric and buckle down quickly to do the hard work that is required to succeed on economic reform.

The German government's main worry is that the pattern of Nicolas Sarkozy's start in office back in 2007 will repeat itself. He, too, wasted quite some time with ill-fated ideas before eventually choosing to deal with reality. Given the intensity of the euro crisis, this is not a good time for the requisite sense of realism to be delayed once again.

The best antidote to the lingering crisis is to deal with the homemade sources of economic trouble. It is they that truly matter for a growth agenda, from sector-specific micro reforms to pruning expenditures and tax reform. These are the measures that allow a government to free up resources for new initiatives and to set the correct long-term economic targets.

France's labor costs matter, too. They have continued to run ahead of productivity gains and reduced not just France's international competitiveness, but also the profitability of...