France’s Protests Fuel a Wider Fight Over Europe’s Future - Jacobin

T he social unrest currently gripping France is in many ways a national phenomenon. Frustration with a stretched education system boiled over in the form of campus blockages and marches beginning late last month. By mid-October, students were joined by broader swaths of the population fed up with high gasoline prices, sticky inflation, and declining real wages. There’s also little new in the violent police response that has shocked protesters and observers alike, both in France and abroad. Emmanuel Macron’s allies above all want to protect the president’s agenda of pro-business tax cuts, an often-elided factor in the country’s fiscal crisis. France’s state deficit is expected to reach 5.