Jérome Fourquet, on the student protests in France: “We are facing the end of a reign”

Jérôme Fourquet (Le Mans, 53 years old) is usually not wrong. And if he does, he does it elegantly. The demographic guru – he is director of Opinion at the IFOP institute –, political scientist and essayist, has deciphered better than anyone the growing unrest in French society. The climate of decomposition, the fractures, the inequalities that have fueled the extremes. Now, in the midst of a wave of protests, he believes that the country is heading towards a dead end. An end of reign, as he himself defines it by videoconference, which is not even guaranteed a solution after the next presidential elections.

Q. What analysis do you make of this protest?

A. It started in the banlieue due to problems of deterioration of facilities, personnel... But it gained intensity because the Government did not understand the extent of the matter. They were absent. There is a political dimension. And everything is part of a twilight atmosphere, the end of Macron's second term.

Q. It seems like there is no one at the wheel.

A. It took a long time for your prime minister [Sébastien Lecornu] to speak. His Minister of Education [Édouard Geffray] does not have a very clear position. And all of this contributes to reinforcing the feeling that no one is piloting the plane. The response at first was only police, also because there is no money for anything else. But the system is already out of breath on an economic and social level.

Q. Is Macron responsible?

R. Macron will be responsible in the eyes of young people. The students who are protesting in the streets today have not known another president. There is an expression that resonates on social networks that says: “In Macron's France.” And it has an air of the old regime, at the end of Louis XIV. A regime that did not end and that invited rebellion.

Q. Why has Macron said practically nothing?

A. Because he doesn't have much to say. In the United States they talk about the “lame duck” when a president is at the end of his term and cannot run again: we are right there. With the aggravating factor that it does not have its own parliamentary majority. Lecornu does what he can without money and [Gabriel] Attal [leader of Renaissance] and [Édouard] Philippe [leader of Horizons] if they can hit him they will do so to distance themselves from him in the electoral race.

Q. But is your inheritance at stake?

A. People have turned the page on Macronism, especially among youth. The 16-year-old boys were seven years old when he was chosen. They have not known anything else. And their parents are disappointed, they are going through all kinds of difficulties. His heritage is at stake, but he is more concerned with the international scene than with advancing things in his country.

Q. How much does the economic and budgetary crisis weigh?

A. A lot. It is not possible to solve this problem with money because there is none. Nor the anger of drivers over the price of fuel. We are in an advanced moment of decomposition. We have also seen it this summer with the heat wave without air conditioning in hospitals... In all sectors of the public service there are the same problems: lack of material, old buildings, lack of personnel... Let us remember the spectacular robbery of the Louvre, followed later by other robberies in more regional museums.

Q. Is there no margin?

A. Today we dedicate more money to paying the debt than to the National Education item. We are trapped by our budget. And before the student strike there was already the problem of gasoline and the Ministry of Economy did not want to provide aid because it could not. The budget debate next week will be very complicated. The president and the prime minister have lost all their support. We are facing the end of a reign.

Q. The problem of youth is broader.

A. We have two phenomena. The first, less marked in France, is the demographic decline. Aging has effects on retirements and education. 1985 was an important date for education. Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement launched the slogan of “80% selectivity”. Before it was only 30%. Today we are at the figure that the minister said. Has the level been lowered to allow it? In any case, in 40 years this policy has been installed in the heads of young people. Now everyone can choose their orientation, something that only an elite 30% could do. The majority attend university studies, and that is not equalizing opportunities, but rather displacing competition. It occurs higher up, or earlier, in the choice of good centers. There is a lot of stress among young people about the issue of orientation. And that has to do with Parcoursup [French public platform that manages access to higher education]: the great machine that guides young people in their careers.

Q. How should the possible convergence between the yellow vests and the students be interpreted?

A. It is a youth movement that is part of a global phenomenon of budgetary difficulty and growth in France. Also about the impoverishment of the Administration, the price of gasoline... So the movement tries to join a much more global protest.

Q. What is the weight of this youth in the vote?

A. Today boys between 18 and 24 years old represent 10% of those registered on the electoral roll. And pensioners are 35%. Furthermore, there are fewer young people and they vote less. The challenge for [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon [leader of La Francia Insumisa (LFI)] is to mobilize them electorally.

Q. Is there a link between the movement in Spain and elsewhere in Europe with this? A breach of the contract between generations, short-term politics...

A. We have an economic situation that is becoming more tense and mechanisms that are very unfavorable for youth. In 1968 only 10% of French people had access to higher education, today it is almost all of them. But today 50% of those students have to work at the same time. The poverty rate among young people is much higher than that of the elderly, something unprecedented until now. In France, the social model speaks of young people who enter the labor market later and have worse conditions. And all this brings us to access to housing, which has exploded in Spain, but also occurs in France. Today the average age of a new vehicle buyer in France is 55 years. Advertising is directed at them. The average age of France 2 or France 3 viewers is 63 years old... We have an entire economic and media system that speaks to these people and has separated itself from the reality of young people.

Q. Does this environment benefit extremes?

A. To France Insoumise for sure. They are the only ones who can enter the protests, they applaud them, they hug them... Mélenchon has 40% voting intention among those under 35 years of age. The old left that Glucksmann now represents is not there. There is a huge generational distance.

Q. And the National Regrouping (RN, of Marine Le Pen)?

R. They collect the vote because of the issue of violence. They are the party of law and order. Today the Government cannot benefit from a reflection against this violence. But it's curious because on the sets, when we see students who are protesting and those who are against, some are from LFI and the others are from RN. As if the central bloc had disappeared from the landscape of young people, and from the political landscape in general.

Q. Is this the end of macronism, of that idea of ​​a radical center?

A. Yes. Neither Attal nor Philippe are in great shape in the polls. And there are two forces that rise at the extremes.

Q. It seems that this “pre-revolutionary climate,” as Mélenchon defines it, will not calm down no matter who wins.

A. There is great general unrest. People used to vote on the other side of the pendulum, left or right, when they were tired of one option. But now it's more difficult. Macron's heirs want to separate from him and there are new alternatives. And it is not evident that whoever is elected president will have a majority in the National Assembly. Whoever it is, they will encounter the wall of debt.

Q. What would happen in a second round between Mélenchon and Le Pen?

A. We do not make forecasts. But barring a monumental accident, Le Pen will enter the second round. The [Jordan] Bardella affair [president of the National Rally and political heir of Marine Le Pen, involved in a controversy for writing anti-Semitic messages in his youth] has not affected them at all. Who will be in front of you? The entire presidential campaign will be summed up in that. I think Philippe has won the game against Attal, but we don't know if it will be enough for him to beat Mélenchon and be in the second round. But if it is Mélenchon, Le Pen will beat him by a wide margin.

Q. Can the second round continue to be a barrier to the extreme right?