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Barely a week into the job, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu faces rising social unrest on top of political deadlock and financial turmoil.
Sept. 18, 2025Updated 11:04 a.m. ET
Big anti-austerity street marches and labor strikes gripped France on Thursday, raising the pressure faced by Sébastien Lecornu, the country’s new prime minister, as he tries to pass a debt-reducing budget by the end of the year.
Teachers, railway workers, students and civil servants were among the hundreds of thousands taking part in the demonstrations and walkouts across France, which in recent weeks has experienced renewed political turmoil and growing concern over its precarious finances.
Demonstrators marched through the streets of Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Nice and other cities under the close watch of the riot police. The authorities have blanketed the country with 80,000 security officers to help contain potential violence and vandalism.
The protests were organized by labor unions angered by the plans of François Bayrou, Mr. Lecornu’s predecessor, to cut 44 billion euros, about $51 billion, from next year’s state budget. Mr. Bayrou was ousted by lawmakers last week, and President Emmanuel Macron replaced him with Mr. Lecornu, a centrist and an ally.
But the anger over Mr. Bayrou’s cost-cutting has persisted. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Lecornu, who had promised a “break” with the past, would scrap his predecessor’s plans or use them as a basis for lawmakers to amend.
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Labor unions say that anything resembling Mr. Bayrou’s budget — which would freeze welfare payments at their current level — would place an unacceptable burden on lower- and middle-class workers. The unions want higher taxes on wealthy individuals and big business, more funding of public services and a reversal of Mr. Macron’s increase in the legal retirement age.
“Today we are sending the government a very clear warning,” Marylise Léon, leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, the country’s largest union, told reporters at a march in Paris on Thursday. “The budget cannot be built solely on the back of workers.”
In Paris, many metro lines were running only during rush hour. Traffic was disrupted on regional train lines but mostly normal on the country’s high-speed rail route. Unions estimated that about a third of elementary-school teachers and 45 percent of middle- and high-school teachers would join the strike, though the Education Ministry cited lower figures at midday.
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Parts of the Louvre Museum were closed, and the Eiffel Tower shut down. The authorities even postponed a move of the Bayeux Tapestry, which was supposed to be trucked under high security to a storage area before a loan to Britain next year.
Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, said at midday after a crisis meeting in Paris that the blocking of bus depots, roads, schools and other infrastructure had been “less intense than expected” so far. At midday, the police had apprehended 140 people in connection with the protests, the Interior Ministry said.
Nearly 200,000 people gathered around France last week for similar protests, initiated by a nebulous, uncoordinated online movement called Bloquons Tout, or Let’s Block Everything. While those demonstrations did not bring the country to a standstill, they attracted about twice as many people as the authorities had expected, signaling deep-seated discontent.
Mr. Lecornu quickly dropped one of his predecessor’s most unpopular ideas — scrapping two national holidays. He also announced that the government would curb certain perks for former cabinet members, like police protection or getting a personal secretary and a driver. The move was mostly symbolic, as it is expected to save only a drop in the bucket compared with France’s deficit, which has ballooned to $198 billion, the largest since World War II.
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“We cannot ask the French people to make efforts if those at the head of the state do not do so themselves,” Mr. Lecornu said last week in an interview with French newspapers.
Mr. Lecornu has been consulting with political parties and labor representatives over the past week to hammer out his 2026 budget and try to avoid the fate of his last two predecessors, both of whom were toppled by lawmakers. But the lower house of Parliament is divided into three blocs — left, center and far right — that disagree on how to address France’s finances.
Fitch Ratings downgraded France’s sovereign debt rating last week, citing the “increased fragmentation and polarization” of the country’s politics. The deficit is well above the eurozone’s 3 percent limit. The national debt hit €3.35 trillion this year, or 116 percent of economic output, one of the heaviest burdens in the eurozone.
To break the political deadlock, the nationalist, anti-immigrant National Rally party is pushing Mr. Macron to call parliamentary elections. The far-left France Unbowed party wants him to step down. But the president has ruled out both demands and has asked instead that Mr. Lecornu find a narrow pathway to a budget deal.
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That has put the more moderate Socialist Party in a key position. It has 66 lawmakers in the 577-seat lower house, enough to make or break a no-confidence vote. But its demands — such as a 2 percent tax on wealth above €100 million — run counter to the president’s pro-business agenda.
After a meeting on Wednesday, Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist Party, said that Mr. Lecornu had been evasive about his budget plans. “So far, we are left hungry for more,” he said.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
