Your message is full of cliches. > when you create a company, you have to pay a separate fee (~200eur) to a private "official journal" to publish the fact that

Your message is full of cliches. > when you create a company, you have to pay a separate fee (~200eur) to a private "official journal" to publish the fact that you're creating a company. Irrelevant, it's a ridiculous amount compared to other costs involved in starting a company. > just check out the ENS's Nobel prize / admissions ratio This doesn't tell anything about the French education system. > Most of the brilliant French minds go to work in other countries where it's possible to create and operate a company. A lot of brillant minds don't have any interest in creating a company. Besides, the world is a big place with many opportunities. Nowadays it's easy to travel and work abroad. A lot of people, brillant or not, leave their country out of curiosity. As any places, France has good and bad things. Usually, we understand what we miss after living a few years abroad.