Thousands protest in France against spending cuts

By Alessandro Parodi

PARIS (Reuters) -Tens of thousands of protesters marched through French cities on Thursday, heeding the rallying cry of trade unions demanding action against plans for sharp spending cuts in next year's budget.

Trade unions are eager to keep the pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, who is racing against the parliamentary timetable to break an impasse in budget negotiations with political rivals.

Macron and his prime minister, who is still working to form a cabinet, need to bring public finances under control in the euro zone's second-largest economy, with European Union peers, ratings agencies and financial markets watching its next moves.

But union leaders, including those from France's largest union, the CFDT, and the hardline CGT, are clamouring for more spending on public services, a reversal of an increase to the retirement age and higher taxes on the wealthy.

"We need to ... end for good all the sacrifices being demanded of workers that were set out in the (last) budget proposal," CGT secretary general Sophie Binet told BFM TV.

Macron's last prime minister, Francois Bayrou, was ousted by parliament over a planned 44-billion-euro budget squeeze. Lecornu has promised a break from those plans.

"The question is what exactly?" CFDT secretary general Marylise Leon told reporters ahead of a protest in Paris.

LOWER TURNOUT THAN LAST MONTH'S STRIKE DAY

About 85,000 people had protested across the country as of midday, the Interior Ministry said - less than half the attendance it reported at the same time in a day of strikes and protests in September.

"We must continue the fight, even if there are clearly not many of us," said construction worker Dominique Menier, 59, who attended the protest in Nantes. "It costs us a day each time. But that's how democracy normally advances."

Protests were scheduled in more than 240 locations around France, the CGT union said, including Dijon, Metz, Poitiers and Montpellier.

Students carrying flares blocked the entrance to a high school in Paris, with some schools in other parts of the country also blocked.

About 76,000 police officers were being deployed to maintain order.

BUDGET DEFICIT CLOSE TO DOUBLE THE EU CEILING

The government faced protests and strikes in September, when hundreds of thousands of people including teachers, train drivers, pharmacists and hospital staff protested against the proposed 2026 budget, and teenagers blocked dozens of high schools for hours.

France's budget deficit last year was close to double the EU's 3% ceiling. Lecornu faces a battle to gather parliamentary support for a budget for 2026, needing support from the centre-right in his camp whilst offering something to the Socialists and their voters.

Parties broadly agree on the need to slash the deficit, which reached 5.8% of GDP in 2024, but not on how to do it.

Lecornu, Macron's fifth prime minister in two years, has promised a budget that delivers more "fiscal fairness". He has ruled out a wealth tax but said the distribution of the tax burden should be shifted.

Alexandra Thomas, a 53-year-old aerospace worker who attended the protest in Nantes, expressed scepticism that Lecornu would be different from Macron's previous premiers.

"The only fear I have is that we've got a different person, but that we'll continue with the same policies," she said.

(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi and Stéphane Mahe, additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Richard Lough and Janet Lawrence)