Dear readers, good morning!
A curfew. Partial and local for now, but a curfew.
This is the response French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu gave yesterday to the unprecedented violence that followed Saturday’s demonstrations. He did not rule out declaring a state of emergency, either, if it proved necessary.
France did not get here because some masked men decided one morning to smash shop windows. As we said yesterday, the crisis comes before the petrol bombs.
For weeks, pupils have been protesting about the condition of their schools, calling for building repairs, cover for absent teachers and better learning conditions. They were joined on the march by concerns over the cost of living, purchasing power and fuel costs, as well as wider dissatisfaction with the quality of public services.
These are not unreasonable demands. But they are costly. And this is where the French impasse begins.
The government does not have the money to meet all the demands being made of it. The budget deficit is forecast at 5.4% of GDP this year, while public debt stands at about 119%, with the prospect of reaching 128% by 2030 if the current trajectory does not change.
Worse still, France can no longer borrow on the terms of its -even recent- past. The spread between French and German 10-year bonds has surged from about 80 to 145 basis points in two months. Nearly 55% of French debt, meanwhile, is held by foreign investors.
The streets are demanding more money. The markets, fiscal discipline. And the government must -somehow- satisfy both. An impasse. And not the only one.
A democratic state has a dual obligation: to protect citizens’ right to take to the streets and protest peacefully, while also protecting their neighbours’ right not to see their shops looted or their property burned. Last weekend, the French state failed on both counts.
Security forces were caught off guard by the scale of the violence, while mayors of major cities complained of inadequate preparations. Paris is now boosting the police and gendarmerie presence, promising a “massive criminal justice response” and resorting to curfews.
The failure does not lie in imposing a curfew. A democratic state must be able to restore the rule of law when it breaks down. The failure lies in the fact that matters reached the point of requiring a curfew.
Because Lecornu now has to do everything at once: restore order without suppressing peaceful protest; respond to social demands without sending the public finances further off course; reassure the markets without further angering the streets.
And he must do all this without a stable parliamentary majority and six months before the presidential elections.
Today’s unrest, moreover, is grist to the mill of the extremes. Marine Le Pen and the National Rally can point to the looting and condemn a state incapable of imposing order. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Unbowed can point to social anger and the curfews and condemn a state incapable of listening to the public. Different narratives. The same political cost for the centre.
This is the perfect storm, French-style.
The streets are demanding more, the markets are calling for less, and the state is struggling to impose order. Caught in the middle is a government with ever less economic and political room for manoeuvre. On the extremes are those waiting to reap the rewards.
France’s problem, then, is no longer just that cars and shops are going up in flames. It is running out of options