One thing I noticed in France on the other hand is the importance of the diploma. In Sweden it has very little value, whereas in France it sometimes shapes your whole career. And the good students coming from a good school directly get high paying jobs in big comfortable companies so that does limit the incentive to risk it all in a startup instead.
Regarding the cost to hire I think it's a false issue. It actually costs more to hire in the US because salaries are higher. Job safety and how hard it is to fire people largely depends of your company culture as well, in my experience for startups it is a very secondary problem. Usually if an employee is a clear misfit they also feel bad and are happy to take an exit package and get a job somewhere else that fits better. It is however a concern for larger companies when you have an employee of 20 years that would never find another job at the same salary level, is without motivation, and is nearly not possible to fire (you have plenty of those in the big french companies, having worked their whole carreer there and just waiting for retirement while doing the minimum not to get fired with cause). But that should not really impact innovation as you wouldn't find those employees in a startup.