A senior politician on Thursday issued a desperate plea for an end to "French bashing" around the world – insisting France is "blessed by the gods" and one of the best places to live on Earth, reports The Daily Telegraph.
Corinne Lepage, a MEP and former French presidential candidate, demanded that other countries, as well as fellow countrymen, stop treating her nation like "the scum of the earth" and a planetary "laughing stock".
Such insults, she claimed, were a major stumbling block to economic recovery for the already notoriously demoralised and pessimistic French.
Francois Hollande's Socialist government has come under constant attack in recent weeks over its plans for a 75 per cent rate of tax on millionaire earners, sending a string of celebrities and top businessmen running for fiscal cover abroad.
The actor Gerard Depardieu has moved to Belgium and taken Russian nationality; his Asterix and Obelix co-star Christan Clavier has moved to London, soon to be joined by composer Jean-Michel Jarre and French optician shop tycoon Alain Afflelou, while France's richest man Bernard Arnault has filed a request to become Belgian.
In an editorial with the French version of the Huffington Post, Mrs Lepage said: "How can a country blessed by the gods with its culture, food and landscapes, that is the world's most popular tourist destination and seen by many as an Eldorado come in the space of a few weeks to be treated like a bogeyman?
Today, she added, France was repeatedly branded a place "where investors are not welcome" and as one Right-wing former minister put it, "the laughing stock of the world".
In truth, more British and Belgian people had taken French nationality since 2010 than the reverse, Ms Lepage said.
Read more of this report from The Daily Telegraph.