Understanding France’s Polycrisis

In the decade I lived in Paris, metro strikes and teacher strikes and intermittent street protests over everything from pension reform to bike lanes were part of everyday life. For this German, it was an education in a different political culture — one that sees street protest as integral to civic life going back to, well, the French Revolution.

But the protests currently rippling across France are different from the ones I remember. Yesterday they spread to more than 40 cities across the country as labor unions joined forces with high school students. Roughly 6,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began in September.

France’s problems run deep. Today my colleague Mark Landler, our Paris bureau chief, writes about a national crisis that pervades — everything.

Barricades and budget woes

By Mark Landler

Barricaded high schools. Striking public workers. Blocked ports. Ballooning debt. Fears of a far-right takeover.

France has suddenly been engulfed by crisis — not by a single spasm of unrest, but by a cascade of disruption that is roiling city streets, trading floors and public offices across the country.

Nationwide student protests have become the most vivid manifestation of this crisis. Last week, thousands of high school students blockaded their schools in protest of crumbling facilities and a shortage of teachers.

Then, on Tuesday, teachers and other public workers joined them in an expression of solidarity, and as part of their own rally against proposed wage freezes.

And before the students and the teachers, there were the fishermen. Last month, they blocked ports and fuel terminals to protest the cost of diesel.

The causes of the chaos may appear disparate. But they have a common root: France’s two-decade-long struggle to fund its state — a struggle now being exacerbated by high borrowing costs, surging fuel prices and political uncertainty.

‘A slow-motion train wreck’

France’s public finances, already fragile, are deteriorating, fanning fears in markets that France could be the next European country to tumble into a full-blown financial crisis.

The country’s debt stands at roughly $4 trillion, more than its entire economy. The annual cost of servicing that debt is projected to increase to roughly $100 billion in 2027. The street clashes have not helped traders’ jitters.

These deepening anxieties do not mean France is destined to suffer a Greece-style debt crisis or the kind of market backlash that toppled a British prime minister, Liz Truss, after she proposed budget-busting tax cuts in 2022.

Economists point out that other countries, including the United States, face pressure on their public finances because of rising interest rates. France’s anchor role in the European Union, they said, means that the bloc’s other members would bail it out, should it ever come to that.

“France’s position looks unsustainable and the bond markets are saying that, but they’re not screaming it yet,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard and a scholar of financial crises. “It’s a slow-motion train wreck.”

But France may be heading toward a reckoning: The country can no longer afford the generous welfare state that has always been so central to its identity.

“That is the deepest source of anger in France,” said Michel de Rosen, a French author and businessman. “We’re a country that can no longer do what it wants to do.”

Le Pen rising

France, of course, is no stranger to social unrest. During the yellow-vest protests that raged between 2018 and 2020, tens of thousands of people, wearing high-visibility safety vests, turned out for weekly demonstrations that also began as a protest against rising fuel prices, then grew into demands for political and economic justice.

President Emmanuel Macron — perhaps mindful of the potential similarities between then and today — last Thursday chaired a meeting of leaders of the G7 industrialized countries, in which they agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from their stockpiles to ease pressure on fuel prices. He said he hoped the emergency measure would cause prices to “drop at the pump as quickly as possible.”

But energy prices are only one source of pressure.

The country’s fiscal jitters have been amplified by recent polls that show the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, is on track to beat all her rivals in presidential elections next spring.

Her victory is far from preordained. She has been convicted of financial corruption, which she denies, and her party president, Jordan Bardella, has been accused of antisemitism, which he also denies. In a runoff against a centrist, Le Pen might still lose, analysts say.

But in another scenario, the double whammy of economic problems and social unrest could play to the advantage of political extremes on both right and left. That scenario could send Le Pen into a runoff against a far-left candidate. And in that situation, analysts say, she’d likely prevail.

What would a Le Pen victory mean for France’s ability to stay afloat? On Tuesday, she unveiled her economic agenda and promised to reduce government spending by 140 billion euros by 2032. (Though, given the students marching outside, she also promised to protect spending on education.)

Would that be enough — and could she pull it off? We may find out.

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RECIPE

This is a version of lapin à la moutarde, or wine-braised rabbit with mustard, a homey traditional French dish still popular in old-fashioned Parisian bistros at lunchtime. It’s essentially a one-pot meal, with a little fiddling. Serve with noodles, rice or mashed potatoes.