On certification : the only example he comes up with is the sempiternal grandes écoles. Now it's true there's a detestable French habit of running the top end of the country with only the graduates of those top schools (though, you know, there are top schools in the US too, and Oxbridge opens doors in the UK...). Then there are required qualifications, as in any other country, for medical, legal, accounting, engineering etc professions. Then there's the civil service that has its own entrance exams.

But, for the mass of employees, it's not true to say that employers demand strict certification corresponding to a particular job. My partner's an accountant for small businesses, and she's constantly asked for advice on recruiting, conditions, contracts, etc: it's very rare for an employer to stipulate a specific "paper" qualification, they just want people who'll do the job.

Larger companies may have specifications, but even there they are not always hard and fast (I can think of a case from only yesterday, where a very big bank, very French since it was the Crédit Agricole/Lyonnais, interviewed a young man for a regional HQ post that was normally way above his diploma level, simply because his overall profile seemed promising to them).

So I think Pfaff's "France is a certifications culture" is not as true as all that, and is in any case condescending.

The second point I'd pick up on is his quote from Patrick Jeudy -- as you say, it makes some sense, but it's not from Pfaff himself. What I take exception to is:

Villepin should have stuck with the success of his scheme for small businesses

That's a reference to the first 2-year probation contract the government brought out, the CNE (Contrat Nouvel Emploi or New Job Contract), restricted to small businesses hiring the long-term unemployed. This is a "success" in that it has not produced opposition and demonstrations (the small population it's aimed at are hardly people who are likely to be able to organize and fight). But it's not such a success on the ground, since employers who learn how it works are wary of using it. In fact, there are compensations for firing written in, that amount to 10% of salary paid up to the date of firing. When employers hear that, they generally prefer a more traditional solution, either a fixed-period contract, or an indeterminate one.

Otherwise, I'm perhaps more riled up than you by :

I am a biased American, of course, but I never dreamed that the first job I found would carry a lifetime guarantee

It's a deliberately skewed assertion that what the opponents of the CPE are asking for is a lifetime guarantee, when what they are objecting to is the opening up of a long period of firing at will. Not the same thing.

Let's leave him the disdainful irony of his "biased American". He is a biased American.