It's so hard to fire people in France, that some large companies simply have a policy of "no france office".
If a business cannot afford to do business in a country, then that business should not be allowed to do business in that country.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location...
US GDP per person is now 50% higher than france:
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/
It wasn't like that 15 years ago.
There doesn't need to be another rule. The existing rules are doing just fine keeping companies out.
Layoffs are not desirable for a company, but sometimes they are required. The fact that a CEO decides to go with layoffs when it's the right thing to do shouldn't be seen as a failure of the CEO. It's the pit stop that keeps the company from exploding if you just ignore all financial health markers and keep everyone employed until the money runs dry and you have to gut the business and sell of part to cover the bankruptcy.
Laying off 1/5 of staff is not a "pit stop" to refuel. It's an admission of staggering mismanagement.
Lay-offs happen for all sorts of reasons. It may be very reasonable to have X number of people one year, but changed market conditions, or financing rates, or whatever else mean it no longer does the next year.
People don't have magic crystal balls. But even if they did, it may still make sense to hire people while financing such a thing is cheap, and to lay those same people off when it isn't any more. Make hay while the sun shines, and all that.
You may not like the fact, but getting rid of poor performers makes businesses stronger and better. Rounds of lay-offs undeniably make such decisions easier to make and justify in large companies.
CEOs who do the same (or more) with fewer resources are generally rewarded. As a shareholder in the company you'd want them to do more with less and make you more value, right?
You might as well argue that any CEO who needs to hire more people has failed. That sounds obviously silly, but it's genuinely an almost equivalent argument.
All of this may not be pleasant for those involved and especially those who are losing their jobs, but that's capitalism for you. Big business doesn't tend to optimise for people's feelings - it cares more about the bottom line and being competitive.
In this case there is an obvious and pressing need. The streaming music scene may be a tremendously complex place to operate a business in, with all it's licensing and labels and countless jurisdictions and legal complexities, but both Apple and Google are sitting there ready to eat Spotify's lunch if they can't figure out profitability.