PARIS (AP) — Marching with thousands of other protesters in Paris, hospital nurse Aya Touré put her finger on the pulse of many who took to streets across France on Thursday against the government of President Emmanuel Macron.
“Fed up. Really, really fed up,” she said. “Those people governing us, they have no clue about real-life issues. We are paying the price.”
Strikes that hobbled the Paris Metro and disrupted other services, coupled with nationwide demonstrations that saw sporadic clashes with police who fired volleys of tear gas, gave loud voice to widespread complaints that eight years of leadership by France’s business-friendly president have benefited too few people and hurt too many.
The day of upheaval for the European Union’s second-largest economy aimed to turn up the heat on new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his boss, Macron. They’re engaged in an intensifying battle both in parliament and on the streets about how to plug holes in France’s finances, with opponents fighting proposals to cut spending on public services that underpin the French way of life.
“I don’t know how it’s even possible to consider making cost savings,” said Clara Simon, a history student who marched in the crowd of demonstrators in Paris, brandishing a poster that read: “University in danger.”
“There’s already no money for soaps in the toilets, no money to fix a seat when it’s broken,” she said. “I’m angry because the economic and social situation in France is deteriorating every year.”
Protesters’ anger at budget cuts
Macron’s opponents complain that taxpayer-funded public services — free schools and public hospitals, subsidized health care, unemployment benefits and other safety nets that are cherished in France — are being eroded by his governments that have lurched from crisis to crisis since he dissolved parliament in 2024, triggering a legislative election that stacked Parliament’s lower house with critics of the president.
Left-wing parties and their supporters want the wealthy and businesses to pay more to help rein in France’s debts, rather than see public spending cuts that they contend will hit low-paid and middle-class workers. Placards at the Paris demonstration read: “Tax the rich.”
“We need to find money where there’s money,” said Pierre Courois, a 65-year-old retired civil servant. “France’s deficit is an issue, but it’s not by cutting on public services that you fix it.”
Many complained about mounting poverty, sharpening inequality and struggles to make ends meet.
“Our pay is stuck, colleagues are leaving, and wards are closing beds,” said 34-year-old public hospital nurse Stephane Lambert. “For us it’s the same story: less money in our pockets, fewer hands to help, more pressure every day.”
At a before-dawn protest at a Paris bus depot, striking transportation worker Nadia Belhoum said people are “being squeezed like a lemon even if there’s no more juice.”
Lecornu’s baptism of fire
As he seeks support for belt-tightening, Lecornu has trimmed lifetime benefits for former government ministers — a largely symbolic first step that won’t generate huge savings — and scrapped wildly unpopular proposals to eliminate two public holidays, a measure intended to spur revenue. He has been meeting opposition leaders and labor unions to try to build consensus for a budget, but his close relationship with Macron puts him in the firing line, too.
“Bringing in Lecornu doesn’t change anything — he’s just another man in a suit who will follow Macron’s line,” said 22-year-old student Juliette Martin.
On his first day in office last week, anti-government protests saw streets choked with smoke, barricades in flames and volleys of tear gas as demonstrators denounced budget cuts and political turmoil. That “Block Everything” campaign became a prelude for Thursday’s even larger demonstrations.
“For decades we’ve been the ones paying for the rich, paying for the billionaires, paying for the capitalists and they’ve emptied our pockets,” automobile factory union representative Jean Pierre Mercier said. “And today, supposedly, we must repay the debt, and once again it’s only the workers who are asked to pay, whether we’re employed, disabled, or retired.”
