Interestingly enough, France used to make the same naïve mistakes the Japanese did : follow too closely the bid "rules", not lobbying enough, not taking political landscape into consideration, not attending to "social events", etc.

Having worked in the areospace industry, I've seen France lose some "in the bag" public markets by letting other countries lobby and spin bid's technical specifications to their advantage.

It seemed they learned the lesson, at least for this bid.