France’s fiscal dilemma intensifies as protest turnout swells amid government paralysis
South China Morning Post · Xiaofei Xu ·
After credit outlook downgrade, debate over minimum wage highlights bitter division over how government should address growing anger.
Almost 600,000 people took to the streets across France on Thursday to protest stagnant wages, the rising cost of living and underfunded schools, as a wave of anger continues to build after nearly a decade under President Emmanuel Macron, just months ahead of presidential elections.
The government mobilised 70,000 police officers and gendarmes around the country as the Interior Ministry counted 575,000 protesters nationwide.
The protests were largely peaceful, yet the movement and the debate around it lay bare an increasingly divided society in which the two sides talk past each other, while a paralysed political system struggles to act as the country sinks deeper into fiscal trouble.
Read the full story at South China Morning Post · All coverage of this story