{"id":433854,"date":"2025-09-18T14:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/433854\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T14:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:57:16","slug":"workers-across-france-strike-over-budget-cut-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/433854\/","title":{"rendered":"Workers across France strike over budget cut plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We will be uncompromising and relentless,” warned Bruno Retailleau, the outgoing interior minister, adding that he had given police instructions to make arrests “as soon as there is the slightest slip-up”.<\/p>\n

Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon, the leader of the radical left party France Unbowed (LFI), asked participants to the strike to be “disciplined”.<\/p>\n

“Any violent actions would only serve one person – Mr Retailleau,” he said.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the protests, Laurent Nunez, the Paris prosecutor, had expressed concerns that the demonstrations would be “derailed” by far-left groups and urged shops in the city centre to close for the day. <\/p>\n

Thursday’s strikes come after around 200,000 people took part in protests organised by the grassroots Bloquons Tout (Let’s Block Everything) movement last week, which caused some disruption across France<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Bayrou’s unpopular budget proposal – aimed at bringing down France’s high public debt with \u20ac44bn (\u00a338bn) worth of cuts – caused him to lose a confidence vote in the National Assembly last week when parties across the political spectrum united to topple him. <\/p>\n

New Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu, who is yet to assemble a ministerial team, has not entirely renounced the cuts and has held talks with opposition parties in an attempt to reach a compromise on the budget.<\/p>\n

Lecornu’s position is perilous. Like his two predecessors, Bayrou and Michel Barnier, he faces a hung parliament divided into three blocs with deeply differing political leanings, making it difficult to craft a budget palatable to a majority of MPs.<\/p>\n

But France is also staring down the barrel of spiralling public debt, equivalent to almost \u20ac50,000 per French citizen. <\/p>\n

Barnier and Bayrou were also brought down as a result of their proposed budgets, which would have entailed substantial cuts – with politicians on the left instead calling for tax rises.<\/p>\n

“Of course, we’d like more stability in government, but whether it’s Lecornu or someone else, we want workers to be truly taken into account,” trade unionist Alexandre Dubois told the BBC. <\/p>\n

“And we need to move away from this logic of short-term economic performance.”<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Marianne Baisn\u00e9e in Paris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We will be uncompromising and relentless,” warned Bruno Retailleau, the outgoing interior minister, adding that he had given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-433854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115225889672761494","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}