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The English say all bad ideas come from France, but that is unfair to the Germans. The scenes of riot and destruction from France may arise from our Gallic friends’ particular circumstances and peculiar habits, but they reflect Europe’s general malaise — one to which the United States is not immune.
The “French intifada” is overthrowing the icons of France. The images are as memorable as the menu at Maxim’s restaurant. A statue of Joan of Arc is defiled with the Palestinian flag. A bust of Marianne, the icon of the French Revolution, is cast to the ground in the trashed city hall of Marseilles. The 19th-century town hall of Limoges goes up in flames.
The statistics are as stunning as Maxim’s prices. More than 2,400 arrests on last Saturday alone. A thousand police and gendarmes injured. Hundreds of businesses looted in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. Schools set on fire. Rioters throwing roof tiles on police like they’re in “Les Misérables.”
Another set of statistics is as shocking as the tab for a detour into Maxim’s cellars. And this bill has yet to land. Though the mob may riot, the real damage will come from the markets.
France has the second-biggest economy in the Eurozone. Its GDP shrunk by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2026. It hit 0% in the second quarter, then grew 0.1% in the third. France’s CAC 40 is the only major European stock exchange to lose value this year.
France’s public debt is 119% of its GDP. In the European Union as a whole, it’s 82.9%. Only Greece and Italy, locked by Brussels in punishing repayment schedules pour encourager les autres, have worse debt problems.
To meet its welfare budgets, France issues 10-year treasury bonds. Foreign investors hold about 60% of France’s debt. As the market loses confidence in France’s future, the premium on French bonds is rising. It’s now at 4.78%, the highest yield in 24 years.
High yields mean higher borrowing costs for the French government. Combine that with a paralyzed economy, a government failing to push its 2027 budget through a divided National Assembly, and the likelihood of a shock result in the 2027 presidential elections, and France is heading for a debt spiral.
President Emmanuel Macron is caught between the mob and the markets. Pacify the streets with a Napoleonic “whiff of grapeshot,” and he empowers his left-wing enemy, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is polling second in the 2027 race for the presidency. Let the mob run free, and Macron empowers his right-wing enemy, Marine Le Pen, whose lead over Mélenchon is growing.
Meanwhile, if Macron doesn’t restructure the economy, the markets will continue to bet against France. And nothing radicalizes the voters like bankruptcy. For, while we are in France’s debt when it comes to cheese and wine, years of waste and paralysis have put France in everyone’s else’s debt.
It is hard to praise Emmanuel Macron, harder still to like him. He is a small man, but he lacks the Napoleonic drive that, so my taller wife tells me, compensates for shortcomings. Still, it is a matter of record that Macron warned the French they were living beyond their means, and that he did what he could, in a small way.
After beating Marine Le Pen to the presidency in 2017, Macron tried to reduce the regulatory red tape that has throttled France’s economy. To slow the brain-drain of talented young graduates, he even converted an old railroad station into a start-up incubator for the French tech companies that, he said, would break Silicon Valley’s monopoly.
He boldly suggested that a 35-hour work week and 30 paid vacation days a year might place France at a competitive disadvantage. In 2023, he fearlessly raised the retirement age from 62, the lowest in the European Union, to 64, phasing in at a headlong three months per year over eight years.
When I visited Macron’s tech incubator, the inmates moaned about a series of human rights’ abuses. How could they move fast and break things if they were wallowing on California-style bean bags? How could the French dream big when they were banned from smoking in the building? The expressions of defiance and defeat as they lined up by the food trucks in the rain for their soggy lunchtime tacos reminded me of the retreat from Moscow.
Today, the 35-hour work week is still in the Code de travail, the Work Code, with overtime convertible into even more days off. C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le travail.
Today, the retirement age is still effectively 62. In November 2025, Macron’s lame-duck prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, cut a parliamentary deal that deferred implementation until after the 2027 presidential elections.
Macron folded when the usual suspects — the unions, the pensioners, the Yellow Vests, the racaille — did what they always do. They took to the streets in protest and spent even less time at work than usual.
The vested interests got what they wanted. The majority got mass immigration, Islamist terrorism, economic sclerosis, and eye-watering prices. Something has to give. As Margaret Thatcher would have said, the state is running out of other people’s money.
Macron can pull his punches with the presidential elections in mind. He can take the gloves off and send in the army. But he cannot escape the verdict of the markets.
Hang it in the Louvre.
Dominic Green (@DrDominicGreen) is a Wall Street Journal Free Expression columnist.