PARIS — A major test looms for France following the likely collapse of French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government on Sept. 8.
Increasing numbers of people appear to be heeding the calls of a murky, leaderless crusade for a national shutdown on Sept. 10. The movement, initially made up of a constellation of anonymous anti-government accounts of varying political affiliations, began earlier this summer, reaching the general public as anger grew over Bayrou’s plans to lop €43.8 billion from the 2026 budget and slash two bank holidays without offering wage compensation.
Bayrou is expected to lose his job after announcing on Monday that he would convene lawmakers for an extraordinary session to hold a high-stakes confidence vote on Sept. 8 over his unpopular spending plans. Barring a major shift, France’s minority government is unlikely to survive the vote.
By setting up his own likely exit just two days ahead of the mass protests, Bayrou may have taken the wind out of the movement’s sails — if would-be protesters end up staying home without a government or budget to oppose.
If people still show up in large numbers, however, Macron will be left to deal with the aftermath.
As of last week, a Toluna Harris Interactive poll commissioned by RTL showed two in three respondents voicing support for “shutting down the country” on Sept. 10, including an overwhelming majority of voters on both the left and the far right. The campaign quickly drew comparisons with the Yellow Vests uprising of 2018–19 — another amorphous mobilization — that snowballed out of Facebook groups.
While most French politicians have approached the Sept. 10 movement with caution, given the difficulty of pinning down its origins and demands, three-time presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon was immediately an enthusiastic advocate.
Mélenchon, a self-described left-wing populist and advocate for what he calls a “civic revolution,” said in a radio interview on Tuesday that trade unions should back the Sept. 10 initiative and call for a general strike in order to put pressure on Macron.
Bayrou could become the second of Macron’s prime ministers to fall in less than a year, if he loses next week’s vote. According to Mélenchon, Macron would then “understand that it would be useless to reappoint a third prime minister, who would of course apply the same policies.”
“We can’t negotiate with this administration,” Mélenchon said. “We need to have him impeached.”
One of France’s main trade union organizations, the CGT, put out a statement Wednesday calling for strikes wherever possible.
Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) party has announced that it would submit a long-shot parliamentary motion to remove Macron that seems doomed to fail. Still, if the protesters show up on Sept. 10, talk of Macron’s exit will grow even louder — although the president ultimately holds the key to that decision.
Calls for Macron’s resignation extend beyond the radical left. Well-known conservatives from Les Républicains party — which has backed both Bayrou and Barnier as part of a coalition with pro-Macron parties — have come out in support of the president’s resignation.
“Emmanuel Macron must make a Gaullian gesture and plan his resignation,” the party’s former leader Jean-François Copé told the conservative daily publication Le Figaro, referring to former President Charles de Gaulle’s 1969 departure, after losing a referendum on constitutional revisions to create new local administrations. Copé had announced during the referendum campaign that he would step down if the vote failed. “Macron must accept that the French people no longer want him and act like a statesman.”
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