The UK has gone the Austerity way because of common sense conservative economics.

The Euro crisis has nothing to do with common sense conservative economics? Practically all Europe is run by conservatives.

Migeru:

France is as committed to fixed exchange rates as Germany is.

France is, and has been for forty years, committed to a single currency. Germany is committed to fixed exchange rates. That may only be a nuance, but possibly a considerable one.

Migeru:

France was the last Western European country to abandon the gold standard. France precipitated the end of Bretton Woods by sending a warship to Fort Knox to repatriate their gold.

France was as gold-standard-convinced as many other countries and wasn't all that exceptional. De Gaulle in particular, as an old conservative, held unthinkingly to the standard conservative dogma on sound money and gold, and it was he who decided on the symbolic gesture of sending a naval vessel to New Jersey, because he loved nothing better than pissing off the US. All this doesn't amount to making France Austrian.

Migeru:

For 20 years after Bretton Woods, France

...adopted the single European currency as its policy and supported the different attempts at bringing currencies into line to create it.

Migeru:

Germany had to be dragged into it kicking and screaming

West Germany would rather have kept the Deutschemark. Again, a nuance that may be considerable.

Migeru:

France allegedly introduced the 3% deficit and 60% debt limits in the Maastricht Treaty

It appears French technocrats invented the actual numbers involved, but not that France spearheaded the principle itself. Indeed, it is reported the numbers were just pulled out of the air in a frivolous way, as if the French didn't expect them ever to be applied.

Migeru:

had no objection to introducing the German prohibition of monetary financing as a bargaining concession to the German sensitivities

It seems unlikely that any party would "have no objection" to what is seen as a "bargaining concession".

None of the above is meant as a defence of French policy re the single currency, which has mostly been a tale of foolishness and wishful thinking across the political spectrum. The single currency has been a will o' the wisp leading France into the morass.