As France grapples with a wave of social unrest, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is set to meet with parliamentary party leaders on Thursday, October 22, at Matignon. This follows a request from President Emmanuel Macron in his Sunday address, the day after violent scenes and looting that have deeply scarred society.
The Prime Minister’s goal is clear: to reopen dialogue with public debate stakeholders and finally calm an incandescent social climate. However, he faces an uphill battle, just two days before a new act of mobilization that he has struggled to hear or understand. Since the first high school blockades in the Paris region, Lecornu and his ministers appear to suffer from a form of permanent delay.
A Government Playing Catch-Up
This lag has been evident at every stage of a boiling October and has proven devastating for the government. It has given the impression of an executive overwhelmed by the scale of anger, acting primarily in reaction to events, before violently highlighting its shortcomings and lack of preparation.
A month before the chaos of October 17, the government faced initial agitation in some Île-de-France high schools protesting their schooling conditions. It took over ten days—as the movement spread nationwide, bringing marginal violence and reaching universities—for the Education Minister to listen and announce a consultation platform as a first response.
Édouard Geffray first received student organizations on October 2, two weeks after the initial blockade in Val-de-Marne. An eternity to extinguish a spark. Lecornu himself only intervened publicly seven days later, pushed by the movement’s evolution and a Macron who barely concealed his disagreements with the security-heavy approach adopted so far.
Drowning Out Youth Demands
The Prime Minister then broke with his cherished discretion to deliver a speech from Matignon. Somber, he carefully drowned out student demands—offering few answers—amid other social grievances, such as those of farmers or against fuel prices. As if the youth revolt, whose distress signals had long been ignored, still did not warrant the full attention of the government and its head.
Despite the executive’s change in tone and the Education Minister’s move to reassign 3,000 waiting teachers, the movement had time to take root. As former President François Hollande said on France Inter on Wednesday, October 21: “When the toothpaste is out, it’s very difficult to put it back in the tube.” For him, “there is nothing worse than leaving the youth mobilized without an answer.”
But this observation, too, Lecornu struggled to hear. This is evident from his entourage’s confidences, who successively bet on school holidays, or even “rain,” to slow the youth movement—far from grasping the extent and depth of resentments. Even last Thursday, the Prime Minister spoke from Matignon of a mere “moment of fatigue” in the country (mostly discussing the agricultural crisis), without perceiving the scale of what would happen two days later.
Disconnection or Strategy?
He was certainly not helped by intelligence services, which predicted 150,000 protesters when various sources ultimately counted three to five times more. But this permanent setback, and the inability to grasp certain anxieties or deep emotions across the country, raises questions. Is it a sign of culpable disconnection? Or a more or less skillful strategy of temporization? Critics speak rather of “pourrissement” (deliberate decay).
If the question arises, it is because Lecornu—a long-time local elected official yet reputed as a skilled politician—has not shone for his speed since arriving at Matignon. Buffeted by repeated crises, the head of government likes to take his time. This was true for the fuel crisis, when he resolved to release some aid after admitting he was “wrong” about the scale of price increases. And it was true this summer, when he inaugurated crisis cells for the heatwave—a week after the first extreme heat episode began.
It is a fact that the self-proclaimed “soldier-monk” has faced an impressive series of obstacles since becoming Emmanuel Macron’s last Prime Minister—all without any budgetary or political leeway. Or very little. A perhaps delicate position, but one that does not explain why he still refuses to receive high school or student organizations at Matignon. Nor why Édouard Geffray still waits to announce possible changes to Parcoursup, the system hated by high schoolers. That could come next Monday—again, off-tempo.
