Hundreds of thousands of workers, students, trade unions, and citizens have taken to the streets of France in a massive wave of strikes, marches, and blockades against President Macron’s long-standing austerity agenda. Yesterday’s “Block Everything” action saw 175,000 people participating in 550 rallies and 262 blockades across the country, with tens of thousands marching in Paris, Toulouse, Rennes, Marseille, Lyon, and Montpellier. The Macron regime responded with massive repression, with eighty thousand police deployed across the country carrying out sweeping arrests and suppression. 

Opposition to Macron’s policies has been growing for years, as he has consistently pushed through cuts in pensions, healthcare, education, social welfare, public services, and wages. These measures have pushed ordinary people to the brink, while profits and dividends of the rich continue to be protected. The €44 billion austerity package freezes pensions in 2026, cuts billions from healthcare, caps ministry spending at 2025 levels, abolishes two national holidays, and slashes social welfare, public services, and transport subsidies, hitting the poorest hardest. Workers’ wages are effectively frozen or reduced in real terms, while the wealthy continue to benefit. Framed as deficit reduction and funding for rearmament, these policies shift the burden squarely onto working people and retirees.

The mounting protests contributed to the fall of Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government. Despite overwhelming popular opposition, Macron ignored calls for progressive leadership and appointed right-wing conservative Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu as the new Prime Minister. 

Macron's refusal to have a leftwing prime minister and continuing imposition of neoliberal austerity policies are not just making his government unpopular and unstable, it is also contributing to the alarming and relentless rise of the far-right in France. The anti-austerity struggle of the working class and progressive Left circles of France has to step up its vigilance against this growing fascist threat.