• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 23, 2015

Advertising Week is happening this week in Europe. And all the usual suspects are in attendance including Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy, who had a few choice words to share.

On the topic of challenges that French businesses face, Levy said: "The result of the elections was slightly better than expected, we were fearing to see the Far Right coming in first. They are second and that is still too high. If we look back at what has been the action of the government in France, I must confess it has not been as productive as it could be. We have a French disease which is half-pregnancy: All our governments have done a lot of reforms, but none of the reforms that have been implemented in the last 20 years have gone deep enough to solve the problems."

And on the topic of British politics, Levy said: "I respect the fact that the UK has this separate currency, and that's fine, the Euro has not been implemented everywhere ... I am so sorry to see that David Cameron has decided he could call a referendum [to pull out of the European Union which Levy said would be "dangerous"] on Europe. This would be the end of Europe as we dreamed it, and this would be for me a very, very strong disappointment."

Wait -- isn't Advertising Week supposed to be about advertising?