Social unrest ahead of French elections: Protesters 'don't believe politics can achieve anything'

First, France is set to increase its minimum wage by 1.6% by the beginning of December. Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou announcing the move. This is the government seeks to ease growing concerns over the rising cost of living. The issue has fueled widespread public discontent, contributing to some of the worst civil unrest that this country has seen in years. This is Prime Minister Sébastien Le Cornu today is also meeting union and industry representatives for a so-called social dialogue conference. Joining me now is Renaud Foucault, a French politics specialist from the University of Lancaster in the UK. Renaud, thanks for your time. We've just heard in the last hour that the French government is announcing this 1.6% raise for the minimum wage, but is this going to be enough? I think at least it shows that debates have been more like organized than they were in the previous weeks and months. So this last round of demonstration was co-organized by the unions and there were some very clear demands for the government and demands that the government could actually meet because this is a deal between workers and employers and in the end the government is mostly a mediator in between both. So the government decided to accept this increase in the minimum wage. The trade-off is well understood. It's going to be bad for unemployment rates and it's going to be good for workers on the minimum wage. And this is a standard deal that might bring a tiny bit of peace of mind in the debates. But certainly the government and the president is perceived as being somewhat of a lame duck government at the moment. With this in mind, what exactly can the Prime Minister hope to achieve with today's social dialogue conference, in addition to that announcement of a rise to the minimum wage? That's exactly your point, is that there are lame duck and minorities. So when people are in the street, most of the people who are asking in the street for any kind of support from schools to pensions, etc., they are asking it to a government without a majority. So what can the government do? The government can share the responsibility. So Le Cornu can tell, if you want to pass a budget, I need some support either from the social democrats or from the far right. So let's all gather at the table and find things we can achieve that are concrete. For the rest, he can only do by himself things that are cheap or free. So, for instance, he can support the revendication of school students by changing the system of admission to university, which he has promised. But again, he needs to sit down with other parties and do consensus. And I think that's why he's the prime minister, because he's supposed to be a man of consensus. Will the trade unions, however, be happy with what they're hearing today? They're asking for more, but they will be happy to see that the system works. The system, when you are feeling that there is indeed a problem of purchasing power for workers in France, you go in the streets, people sit down and they negotiate. So the next round of people who will negotiate are civil servants, because civil servants, they have decreased in their real income for several years now. They've been frozen and not following inflation. So this will be the next round, and this will be much harder, because there, the government needs to find money. And how do you think it's going to impact protests? Will we see a backing down, if you like, from protesters? If I understand this correctly, and this is still early days, but it seems to be an agreement with the unions. So it means that the protests that are organised, co-organised by the unions, should somehow at least find some kind of conclusion. It does not mean that angry people in the street are not as angry as before. People are still really angry about the state of education and the general state of France. This does not solve anything. The problem is still the same. Too much money goes to pay for pension and there is not enough for the rest. And this will not disappear until the presidential election and perhaps even after the presidential election. But as you say there, I mean, it is a reflection of a deeper crisis of confidence in the French political system and also with global issues such as the cost of living crisis, which has been felt across the world. So in terms of what we can expect between now and the presidential election next year, do you expect further unrest? I expect possibly further unrest, but a lot will depend on whether people see some kind of salutes in the political debate. To me, what is really striking is to have those massive demos less than six months before choosing the next president. In a normal situation, people would hope for the best, would say like, OK, I want to have Marine Le Pen because she's the arch-favorite right now, because she's going to make things better. But they don't seem to expect that. They are in the street because they don't believe politics can achieve anything, because they are lost about global issues, I think. To me, one of the biggest symbols is that both Mélenchon and Le Pen, they are using talking points of Russian propaganda right now, like they are all in panic mode about simply the defense of basic values of democracy. That's not the symbol of a country which is using politics seriously to solve its problems. René Foucard from the University of Lancaster in the UK, thank you.