‘People feel suffocated’: cost of living tops French concerns before election
Outside Lidl, Isabelle Martin, a childminder from a village in Creuse, in central France, was loading discounted eggs, sugar and milk into her car. With prices rising, the 55-year-old couldn’t stretch to a full trolley and could rarely afford to drive to Guéret, her nearest town.
“I’m constantly thinking about my bank balance,” she said. At home she turned lights off and cut heating, and she never filled her car’s petrol tank completely “because the cost would be too much of a shock”.
But it was when a young relative working as a rural healthcare assistant recently broke down and wept at the fuel pump because she could barely afford the petrol to get to work that Martin’s anger rose. “How can there not be a mood of revolt?” she asked.
Worries about purchasing power and how to make ends meet have become French voters’ top concern before the April presidential election.
The government says that, on paper, people have more in their wallets since Emmanuel Macron’s election in 2017. The treasury estimates that gross disposable income, which economists use as a gauge of purchasing power, has grown twice as fast under Macron than under his two predecessors, helped by tax cuts and job creation.
But because food and fuel prices are rising, and because fixed costs such as housing, insurance, energy and phone bills account for such a large part of French budgets, voters feel a sense of daily struggle.An Ifop poll last month showed 69% of people felt their purchasing power had deteriorated over Macron’s term.
Last week there was a national strike over wages and the blockade of fuel depots, with people in rural areas dependent on cars saying they were being hit hard. If Macron is reelected next month – as polls suggest he will be – there are questions over whether he could face another form of social protest movement like the which began over fuel taxes and living costs and morphed into a widespread antigovernment revolt.
Macron has said the fallout from the Ukraine war could drive inflationary pressures higher but he has promised to protect households. To cushion the impact of rising commodity prices and global oil markets before the election, the government has already introduced a raft of measures – capping gas and power price increases, giving one-off financial handouts to low-income households to cope with higher energy prices and inflation, and now a 15 cents-per-litre fuel discount.
Martin said that although she received the government’s €100 payment to help with rising fuel prices in December, it was instantly “soaked up by bills”. Rural La Creuse is one of the poorest
in France, with an ageing population, a shortage of doctors, and scant transport options other than cars. In Martin’s village of La Pionnat, with a population of 700 people, the longterm closure of a road has led to protests because it forces villagers to make a five-mile detour, and “that’s absolutely crippling us with fuel prices”, she said.
On walls near Lidl in Guéret, posters for the hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is rising in the polls, promised he would “block prices” for essential goods. Martin would vote for him.
Her husband, Bruno, a self-employed mechanic, fears a high abstention rate. “The rich will all turn out to vote; the poor are so disgusted they don’t even vote,” he said.
On the pavement outside the local prefect’s office, slogans had been spraypainted on the street. “Macron your people are starving,” said one.
At a local fuel pump, Jean, 73, parked his Skoda. “Because pensions are so low I’ve got to keep working,” he said of his job in transport logistics. He voted for Macron in 2017 but won’t do so again. “We’re sleepwalking into a social crisis, salaries are low and people feel suffocated,” he said.
It is uncertain who Macron will face in the final-round presidential vote on 24 April. The far-right Marine Le Pen is leading among a cluster of candidates. She has held ground against competition from the far-right TV pundit Eric Zemmour in part because she has focused on the cost of living and what she calls “the impoverishment of the population”. On a recent visit to a rural town, she said people were “having to choose between eating or heating”. She promised an extra €150-€200 a month for each household by cutting VAT on fuel and raising family tax credits.
A key issue is salaries, particularly among essential caring professions, which are poorly paid and often involve travel over great distances. Pascaline Bon, 44, lives in a hamlet in La Creuse and is a school support worker for children with special needs. She went on strike last week over wages and demonstrated with her trade union, the SNUipp. “Around here, if I or my colleagues have to travel 25 to 35km to get to work then half of our salary is spent on diesel. We’re overdrawn by the fifth day of the month just to feed our children and pay bills.”
Mathias Bernard, a political historian at the University of Clermont Auvergne, said the gilets jaunes protests had revealed the long-running struggle of people living on the periphery of towns or in rural areas, whose increased fuel and energy costs and stagnating salaries were tipping them into debt. He said: “The – as a coordinated movement – have disappeared, but the factors that led to their protests have not gone away. The anger and potential for social protest among those on low and middle incomes is just as present today.”
In Bordeaux, Anne Lauseig, 50, heads a collective of care assistants campaigning for better recognition and pay. She works nights assisting a young woman with disabilities. “We love the work we do,” she said. “But some of us can barely afford the petrol to travel to work. Some go to food banks or sleep in their cars if they can’t afford rent. I wait until the fridge is empty before I buy a little food. I’m not sure the government is aware of the anger and injustice people feel.”