PARIS — French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will face another wave of massive demonstrations on Thursday as he seeks support from the Socialists to navigate a way out of the political crisis that brought down his two immediate predecessors.
The scale of the protests will help the new prime minister gauge the depth of widespread discontent across the country. Authorities are planning to deploy more than 80,000 members of the security forces and 24 armored vehicles across the country, an impressive show of force rarely seen since the 2018-2019 Yellow Jackets protests.
Workers from France’s railway, aviation and education sectors are all set to walk out, which appears likely to bring the country to a near halt.
The prime minister spoke with union leaders on Monday and the Socialists’ leadership on Wednesday as part of his initial consultations with labor and political representatives as he seeks to craft a budget that can pass France’s paralyzed legislature.
The center-left party is making it clear the price of their cooperation, which is crucial to Lecornu’s survival, is high.
“The French need to see [President Emmanuel] Macron’s camp losing,” a high-ranking Socialist who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “It needs to hurt.”
The party’s leader Olivier Faure, who supports the strikes, told reporters after the meeting that Lecornu was vague about his budget plans and said his party was ready to torpedo the government a third time should negotiations turn sour.
“If [Lecornu] isn’t ready to listen, we’ll topple him,” Faure insisted Wednesday.
The new prime minister has said little in public about his plan. At his formal handover ceremony, he promised a break with the previous government “both in form and in substance” and that the 2026 budget must significantly reduce a deficit that is expected to come in at 5.4 percent of gross domestic product this year.
Ratings agency Fitch cut France’s credit rating on Friday, just days after former Prime Minister François Bayrou’s minority government collapsed over his push to slash next year’s budget by nearly €44 billion to rein in a ballooning budget deficit.
While the Socialists have not ruled out working with Lecornu entirely, they are entering negotiations with demands that are hard for both Macron’s camp and Les Républicains to swallow — including a minimum 2 percent tax on those worth more than €100 million that was inspired and popularized by French economist Gabriel Zucman.
Higher taxes on France’s most wealthy citizens are one of several demands being made by those going on strike. In their initial announcement on Aug. 29, before Lecornu took the reins from Bayrou, unions demanded that the government invest in France’s social safety net, green transition and reindustrialization effort. They also voiced opposition to Bayrou’s proposed budget squeeze.
Former President François Hollande, now a lawmaker who often finds himself at odds with the Socialists’ left flank, could prove to be an important interlocutor, someone close to Lecornu, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. Hollande, while ruling out any direct involvement in the new government, has expressed skepticism about his party’s current tax plans and openness to settling for less ambitious tax hikes.
“Everything must be done to avoid a new government collapse,” said Carole Delga, one of Hollande’s former Cabinet members and a prominent figure of the Socialists’ moderate flank. “There need to be negotiations on the next budget for the sake of the French people — to reassure the public by bringing stability, and to avoid alarming financial markets.”
Others on the French left hope that Thursday’s popular discontent will either force Lecornu to concede to some of their demands, like higher taxes on the wealthy and fewer spending cuts, or precipitate his government’s demise.
Elisa Bertholomey contributed to this report.
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