Globalization and Europeanization have forced the French government to reform profoundly its traditional control over the French economy. However, these institutional changes have masked a striking continuity in the ideas and values that characterize the state–society relationship in the French financial services sector. The continued dependence of the French financial services industry on the state has had deleterious consequences for France at the European level, forcing France to punch well below its weight in this sector and undermining its ability to ‘upload’ its preferred model of financial services to the European level.