Anti-Government Protests Rock France

France was rocked by nationwide protests on Wednesday as a citizen-led movement known as “Block Everything” (Bloquons tout) mobilised against President Emmanuel Macron, his government’s austerity policies, and the political establishment.

Demonstrators disrupted traffic, set fire to rubbish bins, and clashed with police in several cities. In Rennes, a bus was torched, and a power line in the southwest was damaged. Authorities confirmed nearly 300 arrests nationwide, with Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announcing that 80,000 security personnel had been deployed to contain the unrest.

Despite the large-scale mobilisation, officials insisted the country was not paralysed. “Blockades were removed as fast as possible,” security officials said, noting that scuffles had broken out but France had not been completely shut down.

The interior minister announced nearly 200 arrests in the first hours of the planned day of nationwide demonstrations.

The protests coincided with a major political development: Recall that President Macron on Tuesday, appointed Sébastien Lecornu as France’s new prime minister—the fifth in less than two years, following the resignation of François Bayrou, who failed to push through a contentious deficit-cutting budget. Lecornu is expected to face what analysts have described as a “baptism of fire”, managing both a fractured parliament and a public angry over austerity measures.

The immediate trigger is Bayrou’s 2026 draft budget, which proposed cutting 43.8 million francs from the national budget, freezing pensions, removing two national holidays and 5 billion francs from healthcare

The budget, intended to reduce France’s deficit, was met with fierce opposition from the left. A survey showed that 69% of protesters supported former left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the 2022 election.

Major unions, however, have distanced themselves from the demonstrations. Most have scheduled their own strike actions for September 18, with only the hard-left CGT union formally backing Block Everything.

Unlike traditional union-led strikes, Block Everything is a grassroots movement organised through social media platforms such as X, TikTok, Telegram, and Facebook. Protesters encouraged civil disobedience under hashtags #10septembre2025and #10septembre, calling for the boycott of major retailers like Carrefour, Amazon, and Auchan, mass withdrawals from banks, peaceful occupations of symbolic sites like town halls and assemblies and strike funds

Though the group fell short of its promise to “block everything,” early actions caused major disruptions. Vinci, France’s highway operator, reported blockages in Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, and Lyon. In Toulouse, a cable fire disrupted rail traffic, while Paris police arrested 75 people in early demonstrations