The French like to take to the streets, and they do it often.

On Sept. 17, students at Lycée Saint-Exupéry, a rather underprivileged high school in the Paris suburb of Créteil, erupted in protest over the abysmal conditions of their institution: chronic shortfall of teachers, poor facilities, long declining quality of education. Two weeks later, a wave of protests had swept cities across France. Students from hundreds of schools and scores of universities joined the protests, backed by their parents, teachers, and trade unions. More than 160,000 students and trade unionists protested across France on Tuesday in the third week of demonstrations.

France has never seen so many violent incidents in a movement made up largely of high school students. So far, over 200 students, 85 school staff, and 700 police officers have been injured in clashes across the country. Protesters have broken into schools and, in some cases, set fire to occupied or blockaded buildings. On Oct. 5, a 15-year-old boy had his hand blown off by a police grenade during a protest in Lens in northern France, an incident that crystallized the heavy-handed response authorities had adopted from the earliest days of the protest. More than 6,000 protesters have been arrested, most of them minors, and later released without charge.

The protests erupted after nearly a decade of Macronisme, the right-of-center, top-down governing style that President Emmanuel Macron of France incarnates. And they express a broader discontent: anger over disparities in school quality, university admissions decisions, and latent racial discrimination, and a sense among young people that those in power were not listening to them, that the country offered them little hope for the future.

The protests are also occurring amid a wider crisis of political confidence in the country. France is holding its presidential elections in April 2027, and the far-right and far-left are leading the opinion polls. The frontrunner is Marine Le Pen, who has worked for years to make her far-right party, the National Rally, more electable while campaigning on immigration, crime, and denunciation of an out-of-touch political class. Her party is already the largest opposition party in parliament, and a snap legislative election following the presidential vote could entrench it further. 

On the other side is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France Unbowed, a far-left party, who is  promising a sweeping redistribution of power and resources toward the working class. Both have built much of their appeal on opposition to the political establishment, the promise to wish away budget constraints, and deep hostility toward the European Union. 

If France today feels like it is at a crossroads, it is because it is. The postwar model of a large welfare and regulatory state, run by a class of civil servants charged with modernizing the economy, tempering market forces and defining the common good, has run its course. 

The collapse of postwar France

France now runs one of Europe’s largest budget deficits: its public debt stands at 119.3 % of GDP and is expected to rise next year. Fears of a crippling financial crisis are growing. Borrowing costs have risen so high that France is drawing comparisons with Greece, whose debt crisis in 2010 threatened the survival of the Eurozone. And with economic growth stagnating, there is no easy way out.

If anything, France would need to spend more: on defense, as Russia grows more threatening, the war in Ukraine continues, and the United States retreats from its traditional role as Europe’s security guarantor; on new technologies, as the country........

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