Two counter words: Ariane, Nuclear (as in 80%+ national electricity)... not too shabby as far as engineering goes... I would add Airbus, LHC, etc... but two are enough.
yeah, as an engineer working in France, I can honestly say that their engineers are pretty good. The problem is that there's another grand école that specialises in producing bureaucrats (seriously!). And for whatever perverse accident of history, they are considered to be la crème de la France, so they call the shots in most large businesses. They consider themselves to be better than lowly engineers, so don't deign to listen to any suggestions about what is technically possible or not.
