France hasn't really benefited much. Italy has been the talking point for a long time and rightly so for the amount of debt plus the chronic political instability, but France is very much on a similar decline path.

Edit: cheap Russian gas + high productivity + political stability + undervalued currency (the Deutsche mark would have been way stronger than the euro) is what fueled German dominance in Europe. Italy/France/Spain/Greece/Portugal all struggled with varying degrees with low productivity, political instability (apart from France) and a currency that was too strong for their macro-economic fundamentals.