French writing is quite phonetic and regular, but there's an extra layer of etymological orthography which confuses people who need to learned digraphs and trigraphs. But English has them too, and there's much more irregular.
It's a fruitless discussion if you pretend that all languages are equal and have the same inertia and networks effects anyway. The network effects of English are too strong, and there would be absolutely no coming back from openly using it as a Paneuropean vehicular language. It's a massive civilisational choice, not some technical detail.
As for orthography, I was merely making an observation. The formal history of both French and English are interesting. I don't think it's a valid point in favour of one language or the other.