On a Modern Path; Our model of solidarity is the right one, but France needs to change a culture that still prefers big, safe enterprise to taking risks.

Byline: Dominique Strauss-Kahn (Strauss-Kahn is a member of Parliament and former Finance minister of France.)

The future of Europe in the next 10 or 20 years--one is tempted to say its existence--depends on our ability to participate alongside the United States, China, India and others in what's called the "knowledge economy." To excel we have to be clear about what has worked, and what has not.

In Europe we've developed a concept of social solidarity that, in my opinion, is the right model for society. The challenge now is to maintain these values while encouraging people to take more risks. Finland and Sweden, for example, show that new models are possible. But for a country like France, which is probably the most state-centric in Europe, this is a huge change.

Throughout the 20th century, French technological and scientific progress was driven by the state. It got some choices right; as a result of the move to nuclear power in the 1950s, we now have some of the cheapest power in Europe and nuclear technology that is probably second to none. And Airbus, a success for Europe and not just France, would not have existed without state backing in its early stages.

But the state also invested heavily in some dead ends. I remember traveling in the United States 20 years ago and telling Americans that every Frenchman was able to connect with services, send text messages and search for information at little or no cost through a device called the Minitel. They were astonished. This technology didn't exist anywhere else. And that was the problem. It was Franco-French technology for a Franco-French market. Along came the Internet, open to the world, and the Minitel was relegated to museums.

The danger here is complacency. We have a university system that is almost totally financed by public funds, and we're very proud of it. At least, we were before the Chinese began ranking the world's universities. We discovered the best one in France was only 51 or 52 on their list. Anyone in France will say, "But how is this possible? What about our grandes ecoles !" But France invests only 1.2 percent of its GDP in its universities, compared with 3 percent in the United States. Even if you take away private funding, the U.S. figure is still 1.4 percent. ...