After 22 weekends of protest, the gilets jaunes show no signs of slowing down. The movement has rocked the French government. The government has made major concessions but has also launched a brutal crackdown. After weeks of repression, police violence and mainstream-media smears, how have these protests lasted so long? spiked spoke to Édouard Husson, dean of the Institut Franco-Allemand at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise, to find out more.
spiked: What is driving the gilets jaunes in your view?
Édouard Husson: The immediate cause was the government’s hike in fuel taxes, but there are much deeper roots. It is really the result of decades of a totally counterproductive economic policy. In 1992, France had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty, which led to the creation of the Euro. I voted against it. I would like to have been proven wrong but I was extremely sceptical of the benefits for France. Every country has its own economic model and you need to have a flexible currency in a changing world. You are left with other mechanisms of flexibility but no government since the 1990s has had the courage to introduce either more flexibility into the labour market or more trade protections, for instance towards China. They haven’t even asked for that within the EU.
The ‘easy’ solution for France was to increase public expenditure and create public-sector jobs. This went smoothly from 1999 to 2008, but then came the economic crisis and the state had to tighten its budget. The result was that living standards have decreased, life has become more expensive, and taxes can’t go down because France has to meet the Maastricht criteria. The upper half of French society is thriving – they have the right skills and right education for a globalised market. But there are real problems for the other half.
It is very striking to see how many older people are committed to the yellow-vest movement. These are people who are recently retired and have had the time to reflect on their own lives, the lives of their children and the futures of their grandchildren. They are now saying, ‘enough is enough’. They cannot accept that their children will have more difficult lives than their own.
The first yellow-vest demonstrations were a shock for the government and the mainstream media. No political party or trade union anticipated the movement. Three hundred thousand people were mobilised at short notice. Because the movement began on Facebook and wasn’t linked to any party, the protesters did not abide by the rules that say you have to declare where you are protesting in advance. Lots of people were just turning up in Paris or in their towns to say ‘here we are’.
