Anti-austerity strikes and protests grip France

Europe
By Editor_1
French riot police use tear gas on protesters during clashes at a demonstration in Paris as part of a day of nationwide strikes and protests against the government and cuts in the next budget, with supporters of the ‘Bloquons Tout’ (Let's Block Everything) movement, France, on Thursday (September 18, 2025) - Tom Nicholson/Reuters

By Aurelien Breeden

PARIS — Big anti-austerity street marches and labour strikes gripped France on Thursday (18), raising the pressure faced by Sébastien Lecornu, the country’s new prime minister, as he tries to pass a debt-reducing budget by the end of the year.

Teachers, railway workers, students and civil servants were among the hundreds of thousands taking part in the demonstrations and walkouts across France, which in recent weeks has experienced renewed political turmoil and growing concern over its precarious finances.

Demonstrators marched through the streets of Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Nice and other cities under the close watch of the riot police. Authorities have blanketed the country with 80,000 security officers to help contain potential violence and vandalism.

The protests were organized by labour unions angered by the plans of François Bayrou, Lecornu’s predecessor, to cut 44 billion euros, about $51 billion, from next year’s state budget. Bayrou was ousted by lawmakers last week and President Emmanuel Macron replaced him with Lecornu, a centrist and an ally.

But the anger over Bayrou’s cost-cutting has persisted. It was not immediately clear whether Lecornu, who had promised a “break” with the past, would scrap his predecessor’s plans or use them as a basis for lawmakers to amend.

Labor unions say that anything resembling Bayrou’s budget — which planned to freeze welfare payments at their current level — would place an unacceptable burden on lower- and middle-class workers while sparing the wealthy.

“The message we want to send today is that labour cannot be the sole contributor to efforts required for building the budget,” Marylise Léon, leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, the country’s largest union, told BFMTV on Thursday. “We want a fair budget.”

In Paris, many metro lines were running only during rush hour. Traffic was disrupted on regional train lines but mostly normal on the country’s high-speed rail route. Unions estimated that about a third of elementary-school teachers and 45% of middle- and high-school teachers would join the strike, though the Education Ministry cited lower figures at midday.

Parts of the Louvre Museum were closed and the Eiffel Tower shut down. The authorities even postponed a move of the Bayeux Tapestry, which was supposed to be trucked under high security to a storage area before a loan to Britain next year.

Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, said at midday after a crisis meeting in Paris that the police had taken 58 people into custody around France but that the blocking of bus depots, roads, schools and other infrastructure had been “less intense than expected” so far.

Nearly 200,000 people gathered around France last week for similar protests, initiated by a nebulous, uncoordinated online movement called Bloquons Tout, or Let’s Block Everything. While those demonstrations did not bring the country to a standstill, they attracted about twice as many people as authorities had expected, signalling deep-seated discontent.

Lecornu quickly dropped one of his predecessor’s most unpopular ideas — scrapping two national holidays. He also announced that the government would curb certain perks for former Cabinet members, like police protection or getting a personal secretary and a driver. The move was mostly symbolic, as it is expected to save only a drop in the bucket compared with France’s deficit, which has ballooned to $198 billion, the largest since World War II.

“We cannot ask the French people to make efforts if those at the head of the state do not do so themselves,” Lecornu said last week in an interview with French newspapers.

Lecornu has been consulting with political parties and labour representatives over the past week to hammer out his 2026 budget and try to avoid the fate of his last two predecessors, both of whom were toppled by lawmakers. But the lower house of Parliament is divided into three blocs — left, centre and far right — that disagree on how to address France’s finances.

Fitch Ratings downgraded France’s sovereign debt rating last week, citing the “increased fragmentation and polarization” of the country’s politics. The deficit is well above the eurozone’s 3% limit. The national debt hit 3.35 trillion euros this year, or 116% of economic output, one of the heaviest burdens in the eurozone.

To break the political deadlock, the nationalist, anti-immigrant National Rally party is pushing Macron to call parliamentary elections. The far-left France Unbowed party wants him to step down. But the president has ruled out both demands and has asked instead that Lecornu find a narrow pathway to a budget deal.

That has put the more moderate Socialist Party in a key position. It has 66 lawmakers in the 577-seat lower house, enough to make or break a no-confidence vote. But its demands — such as a 2% tax on wealth above 100 million euros or a suspension of Macron’s higher legal retirement age — run counter to the president’s pro-business agenda.

After a meeting on Wednesday (17), Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist Party, said that Lecornu had been evasive about his budget plans. “So far we are left hungry for more,” he said.

-New York Times

Editor_1
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