Why is France on the verge of a nervous breakdown?

Jon Sopel (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

SPEAKER_2 (0:09)

Violent rioting in France. Days of it.

SPEAKER_3 (0:12)

These protests did start off peaceful. There were tens of thousands of people gathered in the Place de la Republic, but they did turn violent.

SPEAKER_4 (0:31)

Familiar tactics at tear gas and water cannons did contain, but also antagonised, tens of thousands of demonstrators, The high costs of living, fuel prices, and the erosion of public services. A collective criticism of a centrist government struggling to find answers.

Mike Tapp (0:47)

The word trivial is very localised in European centres.

SPEAKER_6 (0:51)

I also asked the prefect to set up a certain number of them.

Jon Sopel (0:56)

It has been a weekend of mayhem in France, with thousands of shops looted, police injured, thousands of arrests, And no end in sight. And no one quite sure what this protest is all about. Is it one thing or everything?

Emily Maitlis (1:16)

It's mainly driven by the youth, and it's an expression of how much they hate the current political system under Macron, but maybe how much they currently hate politics altogether. Is this a sign of a Europe that's on its last legs?

Welcome to The News Agents.

Jon Sopel (1:38)

The News Agents. It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (1:40)

It's Maitlis.

Jon Sopel (1:41)

And let us not be too prissy about all of this. France has long had a history of protests in the streets, where the protesters are often met with tear gas and water cannon and firecrackers and all the rest of it. This is quite common.

What's so different about what has taken place and unfolded this weekend, which started with a few school kids protesting about the state of their lices and talking about the number of supply teachers that they were having to put up with, has morphed into something much bigger. That has brought hundreds of thousands of people out onto the streets, has seen violence on a level that hasn't been seen for probably decades in France and a government and a lame duck president, Emmanuel Macron, struggling to work out what to do next, and an address from the Alize Palace saying, this has got to stop is all well and good. But how are you going to stop it?

Emily Maitlis (2:37)

Yeah. They massively underestimated the size of the crowd that they were expecting at the weekend where more than half a million people took to the streets. Originally, they thought it would be about 100,000. That all plays into this idea that the government, the people who should be in control have lost control. Today, we heard the French Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecron, say there will be partial curfews tonight. Now, when I was growing up, curfews were the stuff of South America, right? It was when you had, you know, a coup is underway, and the army is about to take the streets, and could everyone get back inside the house, please? Because, you know, toque de queda, there was going to be a coup. And suddenly, it's in our closest neighbor, where they're telling you, you have to stay indoors, because we don't really trust people on the streets. And so, partly, I think, you know, you've covered a lot of French protests, French politics, partly, we're all back saying, oh, this is the France of kind of what we know, and it's 68, and it's the riots, and it's the protests. And partly, it feels very, very new, because of the level of violence, you know, and you look at the pictures, and it's the burning, and it's the Limoges clock tower that's been completely destroyed, and it's young people again, somebody got their hand blown off by, you know, a hand grenade that the police had thrown, and somebody else was blinded. So it all feels like, for us, it's, where has this come from, right? What is the passion that is driving this?

And I was actually speaking to a student in France, a guy called Jon, who is a political student at Sciences Po, and he tried to explain to me what's happening. He's a student in Strasbourg, and he said, it's the result of a system where one election governs everything, and the approach of the presidential election after 10 years of Macron has created this feeling it's time for change. And then he says, look, it always seems to be the case to some extent, but this is the first two-term president since the 2000s, and one so widely despised that the feeling is extremely strong. And it was quite an interesting way of putting it for me. This idea that because Macron had been, if you like, too successful, he'd won again, then all the responsibility for this goes on his decade. And there is this phrase that they use, which I thought was quite interesting. They say, La France à Macron, which means, you know, it's mostly young people there saying everything they perceive to be wrong.