Independent businesses sacrificed by the State
If you're a shopkeeper, craftsman, freelancer or self-employed entrepreneur, this text is for you. And if you're a customer, a resident of an empty town center, a citizen tired of seeing the same signs replacing the same closed shop windows, this text concerns you too.
You're repeatedly told that small businesses are "supported". They talk about aid, schemes, recovery plans, simplification.
But look around you. Look at the curtains that are down. Look at the ones that are still standing - and ask yourself at what cost.
The reality is that small businesses are not being banned. They've just been made impractical.
Not by a brutal law. Not by a conscious decision. But by an accumulation of rules, burdens, controls, instability and complexity that turn every working day into an obstacle course.
On paper, you have the right to open a business. But do you actually have the right to run it?
What you're going through is not a series of individual misfortunes. It's not "the market's fault", or a simple change of era - it's the result of repeated, accepted, sometimes even encouraged choices. It's the product of a system which, whether consciously or not, favours concentration, discourages independence and exhausts those who don't fit into the boxes.
And when the same mechanisms successively weaken farmers, carers and then small shopkeepers, it becomes difficult to speak of coincidence.
This article does not seek to reassure. It seeks to remind us that this system does not function alone - it functions because we all participate in it, to varying degrees. It seeks to understand. To name what's really going on.
And to ask a simple but disturbing question: what's entrepreneurial freedom worth when only the biggest can survive?
If you've ever had the feeling that "something's not right", if you've ever thought that honest work is no longer enough, if you've ever felt like you're fighting against an invisible system... then read on.
Modern sabotage: silent wear and tear
In France, no one formally prohibits you from opening a business. On paper, entrepreneurial freedom still exists. Articles of association are created, shop windows are opened, projects are launched. Everything seems possible.
But if you're a retailer, you already know: this freedom has become largely theoretical.
Between what the law promises and what the field imposes, the gap is no longer accidental. It's structural. And, above all, it is tolerated.
Entrepreneurship today is no longer just about practicing a trade. It means accepting to evolve in an environment saturated with ever more complex standards, declarations, thresholds and procedures. According to several parliamentary and Cour des Comptes reports, France is characterized by a particularly dense stack of standards for very small businesses, with unstable, shifting rules that are often illegible to anyone who is not a legal expert.
Taken separately, each measure seems defensible.
A health standard? Who would dare challenge it?
A social obligation? Who could object?
An environmental rule? Who would say no.
But ask yourself the real question: at what point does accumulation become a strategy of attrition?
Because these rules don't add up in a vacuum. They pile up. They overlap. They change. And by dint of this, they turn every working day into an obstacle course - one that you're expected to negotiate alone, without fail, without complaint.
The time you devote to your job shrinks. Instead, you have to do other work: forms, receipts, deadlines, anticipating controls, fear of mistakes. This work creates no economic value. It feeds neither your business nor your customers. It only serves to keep you compliant.
According to INSEE and DARES, the managers of very small businesses spend an average of more than 20% of their time on administrative and regulatory tasks. Twenty percent. For structures that often operate with one or two people. And yet, no one is shocked by this figure any more.
You are not the first to be subjected to this mechanism. The world of agriculture experienced it long before you did. Farmers were never forbidden to work. They have simply been subjected to an increasingly restrictive and complex framework, to the point of making their profession economically fragile and humanly untenable.
Here again, the rules have never stopped increasing. And here again, they have been applied, justified and standardized - out of habit, out of fatigue, out of resignation.
What is emerging is not a brutal ban. It's a far more effective strategy: attrition.
A system that never closes the door, but makes each step cost more and more. A system that never says no, but ends up discouraging those who have neither the means, nor the energy, nor the desire to fight constantly.
And this system holds together for one simple reason: because it works as long as everyone agrees to adapt to it rather than question it.
When the law sorts: same rules, radically unequal means
You keep hearing that the law is the same for everyone. In theory, this is true. In practice, it's a myth.
An identical rule never produces the same effects depending on the means of the person who has to apply it. This principle is known, documented and obvious. And yet, we continue to pretend it doesn't exist.
For a large organization, a new obligation is absorbed. It is mutualized, integrated into existing processes, diluted within the organization. For an independent business, the same rule is immediate, frontal and non-negotiable. It is imposed without delay, without margin, without net.
You have no legal department, no compliance officer, no regulatory watch unit. You have to understand the rules, follow their evolution, interpret them correctly and apply them - often alone, in the evenings, at weekends, when the store is closed. This time is neither recognized nor paid. And yet, it directly conditions the survival of your business.
In contrast, the major chains have dedicated teams, tools and cash reserves capable of absorbing these constraints. Better still, certain standards become real barriers to entry for them. What holds you back protects them. What exhausts you eliminates your most fragile competitors.
Ask yourself the straightforward question: when a rule systematically eliminates the smallest, can we still speak of equality?
The figures bear this out. According to the Banque de France, very small businesses account for over 95% of all French companies, but their capacity to absorb regulatory and fiscal shocks is incomparable to that of larger structures. As a result, bankruptcies and cessations of activity massively affect the self-employed, even when the business remains economically viable.
It's not necessarily a question of a desire to exclude. It's about a system that mechanically sorts according to one's ability to bear the strain. And as long as this reality is accepted, justified or minimized, the law ceases to protect real equity. It organizes a silent economic concentration.
Burdens, instability and the inability to plan ahead
In addition to standards, there's another constant threat to small businesses: unpredictability.
Entrepreneurship presupposes one simple thing: the ability to plan ahead. Know where you're going. To anticipate. But today, this visibility is disappearing. Costs are rising, thresholds are changing, schemes are changing names, rules and conditions. What was valid yesterday may become obsolete tomorrow - without you having any say in the matter.
You're expected to make tough decisions - investing, hiring, sometimes going into debt - within a framework that never stands still.
According to INSEE, nearly a third of VSE managers say they've given up investing or hiring because of regulatory and tax uncertainty. In other words, the risk is no longer the business itself, but the framework surrounding it. Hiring becomes a gamble. Growing becomes a danger. Many prefer to stay deliberately small, not out of strategic choice, but out of fear of falling into an even more stifling level of constraints.
And this situation is no accident. It is known. Measured. Documented. And yet, it persists.
Because this instability is not just economic. It is deeply psychological. Living under the constant threat of controls, rule changes or new interpretations is exhausting. Merchants are no longer creating, or even developing. They are in permanent defense.
Day after day, energy is no longer used to do better, but to hold on. To anticipate the next threshold. To avoid the next mistake.
Over time, this climate produces a perverse effect: abandonment before bankruptcy. Many businesses close not because they don't work, but because their managers can't take it anymore. Because continuing costs more, mentally and humanely, than stopping.
And here again, this result is not an economic inevitability. It's the product of a system that everyone accepts as long as it doesn't affect them directly.
The myth of aid: when dependence replaces autonomy
When an economic sector begins to falter, the public response is almost always the same: aid.
Support plans, subsidies, temporary exemptions. The rhetoric is reassuring: the State protects. But ask yourself: what is it really protecting?
Because behind this benevolent façade often lies a much more destructive mechanism.
Agriculture is the most telling - and worrying - example.
For decades, instead of guaranteeing remunerative prices and a stable framework, agricultural income has been gradually replaced by subsidies. Today, according to the Court of Auditors and the European Commission, over 80% of average farm income in France depends directly on CAP subsidies. Without these subsidies, a majority of farms would simply not be viable.
In other words, it's no longer enough to work. You have to be eligible.
This changeover has profoundly transformed the profession. To receive these subsidies, farmers have to deal with complex systems, changing criteria, frequent checks and a heavy administrative burden. Subsidies keep them going, but they never solve the fundamental problem: producing more and more, selling for less and less, and making up the difference with subsidies.
Above all, they shift responsibility. Income no longer depends on work, but on compliance.
The human consequences are well known. According to the Mutualité Sociale Agricole and INSEE, the suicide rate among farmers remains persistently higher than that of the general population. Behind these figures lie debt, isolation, constant administrative pressure, and the question that keeps coming up: what's the point in going on?
This tragedy is no accident. It is the product of a model in which aid has replaced income, and dependence has taken the place of autonomy.
And if that seems a long way off, think again.
Because the same pattern is now extending to small businesses. Faced with burdens, instability and competition, the response remains the same: temporary aid, conditional schemes, targeted exemptions. Once again, you have to fill in the forms, justify yourself and wait. Once again, we treat the symptoms without ever correcting the cause.
Aid is never neutral.It creates a relationship of dependence. Little by little, the independent retailer ceases to be fully autonomous. He becomes a manager of systems, dependent on criteria beyond his control - and often forced to adapt his business not to his customers, but to administrative requirements.
The recent history of agriculture should have served as a wake-up call. For what has permanently undermined an entire farming world is now, almost silently, taking hold in the independent trade - with general assent, as long as it seems to "support" rather than destroy.
Why the state is doing it
Faced with the gradual collapse of small businesses, one question keeps coming up: why is the state letting this happen? Why is it that, despite warnings, serial closures and the visible exhaustion of the self-employed, the framework is never radically changed?
The answer is uncomfortable, because it is not based on a single decision, nor on a clearly formulated intention. It is based on a series of structural logics which, when put together, always produce the same effects - and which we have collectively learned to tolerate.
Firstly, the State favors what it can control. An independent business is local, singular and human. It escapes standardized grids, simple indicators and centralized dashboards. Conversely, a large chain or platform is legible, standardized and predictable. In a highly centralized administrative system, this difference is not neutral: complexity becomes a filter, favoring those capable of adapting to it and discouraging others.
Secondly, concentration simplifies management. The fewer economic players there are, the fewer special cases there are to deal with. For an already saturated administration, economic diversity is not an asset to be preserved, but a complication to be managed. The gradual disappearance of small businesses thus becomes a form of silent rationalization - rarely assumed, but rarely fought.
There is also a more disturbing reality, which we often prefer to avoid: dependence is politically more stable than autonomy. A truly autonomous independent is unpredictable. He criticizes, he resists, he doesn't fit easily into boxes. Conversely, a player dependent on aid, exemptions or conditional arrangements waits, adapts and conforms. We no longer speak of entrepreneurial freedom, but of eligibility.
Finally, public action seems to have abandoned any overall vision. It operates through successive adjustments, temporary measures and permanent crisis management. What is not easily measured - the social bond, the vitality of a town center, the dignity of a profession - becomes secondary, even invisible.
It is not necessary to want to enslave in order to produce the effects of enslavement. All that's needed is a system that favors control, centralization and dependence, to the detriment of autonomy.
One could speak of a conspiracy. But that would be almost reassuring. The reality is even more disturbing: this system works simply because it is applied, accepted, justified, sometimes even defended - as long as it doesn't directly affect those who watch it work.
And elsewhere in Europe? Different models, same conclusion
The French situation is often presented as inevitable, as if the disappearance of small businesses were a natural consequence of modernity. However, a closer look at the rest of Europe reveals a far more nuanced reality.
Difficulties exist everywhere. Competition from large retailers and platforms is global. But not all countries have chosen to weaken their self-employed in the same way.
In countries like Germany, the regulatory framework is generally more stable. Changes are less frequent, better anticipated, and integrated into long-term spatial planning policies. In these countries, city-center retailing is seen as a structuring element of local life, rather than an adjustment variable. This stability enables retailers to plan ahead and invest without living in constant fear of a sudden change in the rules.
In Denmark, the relationship between the administration and small businesses is based more on trust. Procedures are largely paperless, simple and fast. Errors are treated first and foremost as a problem to be corrected, rather than as a fault to be punished. This approach is profoundly changing the climate in which the self-employed evolve: less fear, less tension, more clarity.
Estonia takes this logic even further. Its digital administration has been designed to minimize the administrative burden and offer a high degree of regulatory predictability. Setting up and running a business there is seen as a normal act, not as an obstacle-ridden journey. Time spent on compliance is deliberately limited.
But the comparison doesn't stop with the Nordic or Central European countries.
Italy and Spain, which are culturally and economically closer to France, offer another equally telling counter-example. These countries are neither models of perfect simplification, nor administrative paradises. And yet, on the whole, their city centers remain livelier, and their independent shops more present.
In Italy, small-scale retailing is still widely perceived as a social and cultural pillar. Normative pressure does exist, but it is often less fussy on a day-to-day basis. Controls are more progressive, and errors are more frequently corrected than punished. Local authorities play an active role in preserving the commercial balance, without suffocating the self-employed under permanent suspicion.
In Spain, the administration has developed a more pragmatic approach, particularly after severe economic crises. The framework remains demanding, but less unstable and less punitive. There are many independent retailers, particularly in family businesses, and they continue to keep neighborhoods alive without being crushed by constant regulatory overkill.
None of these countries has found a miracle solution. But they all demonstrate one essential thing: small-scale retailing is not doomed by nature. It is either weakened or protected by the administrative, political and cultural choices that shape its existence.
Comparing these models is in no way ideological. It simply serves to remind us that the current situation of small businesses in France is neither universal nor inevitable. It is the result of choices.
And what is the result of choices can, in theory, be corrected.
What still depends on us, on YOU
We can discuss intentions. We can debate the speeches, the reforms, the words used. But one thing is beyond debate: small businesses are disappearing, independent companies are running out of steam, and the economy is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
What's at stake here goes far beyond the question of trade. It's about real freedom. It's about being able to make a living from one's work, without having to depend on schemes, conditional aid or increasingly unstable rules. It's about a country's ability to bring its territories to life in ways other than through standardized signs and platforms disconnected from reality.
The recent history of agriculture should have alerted us. So should the history of independent healthcare providers. Today, small businesses are following the same trajectory: working more and more, for less and less time, in a system that replaces autonomy with conditional survival.
This model is not neutral. It is shaping a more dependent, more fragile, more uniform society. And once the independents are gone, there's no turning back.
However, not everything is out of reach.
Because there's still one lever that neither the state, nor the big structures, nor the Excel spreadsheets have total control over: your daily choices.
Every purchase is a signal.
Every euro spent is a silent vote.
A vote for the world you choose to support.
Support your local shops.
Support independent businesses.
This is not a nostalgic gesture.
It's an economic act.
A political act.
An act of collective responsibility.
Because an economy without independents is no longer truly free.
If this article echoes what you see, what you experience or what you fear, share it massively. But don't stop there: bear witness. What's the situation in your town, in your country? As long as these realities remain silent, they will continue to impose themselves without debate.
Sources and references
INSEE – French productive fabric (number, employment and value added of SMEs)
INSEE – Definition of SMEs and micro-enterprises
INSEE – Key figures for very small businesses and SMEs (source in French)
Banque de France – Financial situation of businesses (2024) (Source in French)
European Commission – SME Performance Review (2024/2025)
OECD – SME and Entrepreneurship Outlook (2023)
Small Business Act for Europe – Principles for supporting SMEs
Comparative studies on SME access to credit
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