Vladimir Arnol’d (the famous Russian mathematician) touches on that subject in his essay « Sur l’éducation mathématique » <https://smf.emath.fr/system/files/filepdf/Gaz-78-Arnold.pdf> (in French; Arnol’d also taught in France).

According to him, mathematical teaching has become overly abstract, leading to students being disgusted by maths, seeing it as disconnected from reality. Some of these students then end up being ministers… Original quote:

« Comme de telles mathématiques scolastiques, séparées de la physique, ne sont adaptées ni à l’enseignement, ni à aucune application éventuelle à d’autres sciences, les mathématiciens se sont fait haïr des lycéens (dont certains ensuite sont devenus ministres) et des utilisateurs. »

I think most of the people in the "making decisions" business don't really care about how or even if something is possible, they leave it as an exercise in compliance for the "boffins" and "les techniciens".

France has great engineering tradition. One of the left leaders is PhD in math. As I mentioned, multiple comments by members of National Assembly were quite educated. The problem is with key politicians having perverse incentives and misrepresenting bad things to the less educated public.