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Now protests over France's cost of living show no signs of easing with more than half a million people hitting the streets nationwide. The demonstrations pile fresh pressure on the government as it struggles to push a contested budget through a fractured parliament. For more, let's bring on our Paris bureau chief, Alan Katz. Alan, demonstrations yesterday showing the continuing anger among parts of the general public. The prime minister convening talks with unions and business leaders on Monday. What are they hoping to achieve?
Oh, that's a good question, Stephen. I mean, the government really doesn't have a lot of leeway to offer much people. Now the ostensible purpose of this meeting is to talk about cost of living. That's the main thing that people were protesting against, yesterday. Again, the yesterday's protest marches were run by unions, unlike the student ones that started sort of more than a month ago. And, again, when you're dealing with unions, then you have at least someone to talk to and some more specific things that you can talk about. You can talk about trying to bring forward the indexation date of the minimum wage the government has
proposed. That, on the other hand, would only bring maybe an extra 15 or €20 to people's pockets, so it's probably not. And be sort of a one time thing. So it's not really likely to get them very far. And there have been. There's been no indication yet about what the government could offer that might actually, calm this anger. At the same time, in a rare piece of good news for the French government at the moment, the bond rally that's happening around the world is helping to ease a little bit of the pressure that markets have been exerting on France as well. But the debate over the budget doesn't look like it's making any progress.
It really isn't for the moment. And even that easing pressure in the bond market, it's it's pretty relative. So if you look back to, say, September, the spread between French bonds and German bonds or the extra yield that investors demand to pay for the extra risk that they perceive in France was about 85 basis points. So 0.85 percentage point. It spiked up to as much as a 178 basis points, and now it's back down to about one fifty, one fifty five. So, yes, it's eased, but it's not like it's gone back to where it was just a few months ago. So that pressure remains even if it's not quite as acute as it was, say, two weeks ago. And then if your point on the budget is correct, there really isn't. It isn't going anywhere, and
it doesn't look like it's going to go anywhere. Right now, the way it stands is that the national assembly has rejected the budget. So the initial version of the draft goes to the senate. It doesn't doesn't really matter actually that much what the senate decides because at the end, then it would have to go back to the national assembly, which would presumably reject it again. And so what we're headed toward is the government trying to pass the budget through some form of a decrease system. There's two different systems. It's a
little bit complicated to explain, but one of them allows them to pass the budget sort of no matter what come mid December even if there's a no confidence vote and the government falls, but then they can't change anything from the original draft. So they can't offer anything, for example, to unions who've been out protesting. The other one would allow them to change a few things, but exposes them to a no confidence vote where if they lose that no confidence vote, then the budget disappears and you gotta start from square one. So those are the two most likely scenarios. Which one the government will pick is not
clear yet. But if they pick the one where it's sort of more sure about what happens, then they really can't offer anything because they'd have to use the original budget they presented back in September.
