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YELLOW VESTS

No fuel taxes or Macron’s head: What do the ‘yellow vests’ actually want?

The 'yellow vests' movement might have been sparked in response to the rising cost of diesel and gas in France but as time has gone on the demands and ambitions of the protest movement have grown to encompass much more than the price of fuel. Here's a look at their demands.

Published: 29 November 2018 16:36 CET
No fuel taxes or Macron's head: What do the 'yellow vests' actually want?
Photo: AFP

The 'yellow vests' have published a list of demands on social media, revealing once and for all that their grievances are far bigger and more complex than the rising cost of fuel.

The list, which was sent to Environment Minister Francois de Rugy, was created based on a survey posted on various 'yellow vest' groups online, with around 30,000 people believed to have taken part. 
 
The two main demands are to reduce all taxes and to create a “citizens' assembly”.
 
But already it looks like they might struggle to secure at least one of these. 
 
 
The president made it clear that the hike in fuel taxes on diesel and petrol that will come into force in January, will not be scrapped but they could be reduced when there are spikes in the price of petrol.
 
“What I've taken from these last few days is that we shouldn't change course because it is the right one and necessary,” he said. 
 
Meanwhile, their other demands challenge how the French government systems works, inequality and financial vulnerability. 
 
READ ALSO:

'Yellow vests': 80 percent of French people consider Macron's measures 'insufficient'Photo: AFP

Transport and the environment
 
These included reducing the the ecological tax (known as the TICPE), which makes up the largest share of the price of a litre of fuel, scrapping the bill to ban non-road diesel which is used by farmers and scrapping the ban on the glyphosate weedkiller which is suspected to be carcinogenic. 
 
They have also demanded a complete abandonment of the plan to replace people's petrol cars with more environmentally-friendly electric cars, which are seen by many as too costly, and an end to the marketing of biofuels. 
 
Institutional reforms
 
Meanwhile, some of their demands covered institutional reforms. 
 
These included consulting the French people more frequently on policies, for example by holding national and local referendums, suppression of the French Senate, whose members are indirectly elected by elected officials.
 
In a similar vein, they also ask that blank votes are counted in elections and that French laws should be put forward by the citizens themselves. 
 
Regarding employment and businesses, the 'yellow vests' are demanding a decrease in payroll taxes for employers (cotisations sociales), and increased public financial aid for permanent hiring on fixed-term contracts as well as for apprenticeship contracts. 
 
This includes hiring people with reduced mobility. 
 
READ ALSO:
'We won't cut fuel taxes': Macron responds to 'yellow vest' demands
Photo: AFP
 
They would also like to see an increase in the minimum wage, known as the SMIC in France, which currently sits at €7.83 an hour or €1,188 a month, to €1,300 per month, as well as an increase in the household allowance. 
 
The 'yellow vests' would also like to see help for people to return to employment and training to help people change careers and they would like gender equality to be respected, with employees with the same qualifications and positions to be paid the same wage whether or not they are male or female.
 
Fight against vulnerability
 
Some of the demands of the gilets jaunes were concerned with protecting people against falling into a financially vulnerable situation. 
 
The protest group outlined the most urgent of these as having zero homeless people in France. 
 
Among these were increasing pensions and an end to special retirement plans which are awarded to employees of some government-owned corporations.
 
On a similar note, they want retirement to be calculated in the same way for everyone.     
 
They'd also like to see a reassessment of France's personal housing allowance (APL) and an increase in financial assistance for housing, transport and cultural activities for students.
 
They want everyone to be on the same social security system, including artisans and auto entrepreneurs and an end to RSI, the French social security scheme for independent traders and freelancers.
 
The gilets jaunes have also asked that asylum seekers are treated well, saying that France owes them housing, security, food and education.

 

Photo: AFP
 
Consumerism and industry
 
The 'yellow vests' want people to favour small businesses in villages and city centres and for the construction of large commercial areas around major cities to stop due to the fact that they kill small businesses. 
 
They are also demanding more free parking in city centres. 
 
Along similar lines, they'd like large companies such as McDonalds, Amazon, Google and Carrefour to pay high taxes and smaller companies, including artisans to pay lower taxes. 
 
They are also calling for better protection over French industry, including banning companies from relocating, arguing that protecting French industry means protecting French know-how and our jobs.
 
Public spending
 
When it comes to public spending, the 'yellow vests' have some firm ideas about how to adapt it. 
 
They want to see a significant reduction in the salaries of members of the government, as well as the abolition of certain privileges, such as allowances, and for expenses claimed by elected officials to be controlled. 
 
More specifically, any elected representative will be entitled to the median salary and their transport costs will be monitored and reimbursed if they are justified. They will also have the right to restaurant tickets.
 
They have also called for an end to austerity. 
 
Education, culture and health
 
They'd like people with disabilities to be included in all areas of society and for everybody to have access to culture.
 
And they want an end to article 80, a controversial measure which private ambulance companies worry will threaten their jobs, as hospitals are now under the obligation to put out calls for tender for transport contracts.
 
What the 'yellow vests' say (according to their eponymous clothing)
 
Often one of the easiest ways to understand what a protest movement wants is by looking at the slogans on their clothing. 
 
In the photo below, a man wears a vest, saying “Macron, resign. Stop the carnage. The people decide, not you”. 
 
Photo: AFP
 
The man's sign in the image below reads: “Macron killed me, Grandpa is warming himself by candlelight.”
 
Photo: AFP
 
“This is too much,” reads the gilet jaune below. 
 
Photo: AFP
 
'Yellow vest' protesters wearing jackets reading “enough taxes” and “angry worker, stop taxes”.
 
Photo: AFP

Member comments

  3. How is all this going to be implemented.? The requests/demands are unsustainable. They must
    have a plan or they are just dreamers, not jokers.

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Is France’s ‘yellow vest’ movement really on its way back?

Nearly two years since 'yellow-vest' protesters flooded the streets, the signature gilets jaunes have become a rare sight in France. With a comeback announced on September 12th, what is left of the movement that shook France?

Published: 3 September 2020 11:53 CEST
Updated: 12 September 2020 08:58 CEST
Is France's 'yellow vest' movement really on its way back?
Yellow vest protests in Paris in 2019. Photo: AFP

When Priscillia Ludosky put on a yellow vest for the first time and headed out to the Champs Elysées to protest, she had no idea that nearly 300,000 people would do the same.

It was November 17th, 2018, the first 'yellow vest' protest in the capital and the birth of a mass-movement so large that its vows to overthrow French President Emmanuel Macron’s government seemed, for a moment, credible. 

Nearly two years later, Macron is still president – and aiming for reelection – while the ‘yellow vest’ movement has all but disappeared from the public eye.

“It’s been a long time since I wore the yellow vest,” Priscillia Ludosky, founder and leading figure of the movement, told The Local.

She had not left the movement, but said she was less active than she had been.

“I'm less on-the-ground than I used to. The pandemic put the brakes on most things,” she said.

Despite France's rising coronavirus rates, the 'yellow vests' have declared a comeback protest on September 12th, promising to “never give up”.

 

But with the protests before lockdown gathering only a fraction of the numbers they once rallied, how much is there really left of the 'yellow vests'?

“The movement is much smaller, much less active, and much more divided than it was at the outset,” historian Sylvain Boulouque told The Local.

Boulouque has followed the movement from the beginning and has written the book Mensonges en gilet jaune (Lies in yellow vests), about the role social media and fake news played in fuelling the 'yellow vests' anger.

When the ‘yellow vests’ first spiralled into a national mass-movement, their rallying cry “Macron demission !” (Macron resign) was the one ringing the loudest, and it was also one of the few demands that all of the ‘yellow vests’ could unite behind.

“The movement spans all the way from the extreme-left to the extreme-right. There is no unity on the fundamental political questions,” Boulouque said.

The more time passed, the more the movement's internal divisions became clear. Today, Boulouque said, there was “a little bit of everything” left, and just keeping track of the movement had become a challenge.

“It’s so local that the demographic changes from town to town and week to week,” he said.

Among the extreme right-wing were a number of conspiracy theory believers, he said, including anti-mask activists who opposed the French government's new rules on masks.

Pro- and anti-masks was just the newest fault line dividing the 'yellow vests', Boulouque said.

“The pandemic will split them rather than reunite them,” he said.

‘Covid proved our points’

Seizing on the pandemic to re-mobilise the masses is what the still-active 'yellow vests' hope to do on September 12th.

Leading 'yellow vest' figure Jérôme Rodrigues. Photo: AFP

Jérôme Rodrigues, another ‘yellow vest’ leading figure, told Slate that the pandemic was their “best ally”.

“Covid proved our points about the degrading of the health system and the limits of the capitalist system,” Rodrigues said.

When the French government imposed a nationwide, strict lockdown in March, it was to save the hospitals in hard-hit areas such as Paris from the mounting pressure of a rapidly increasing patient flow. 

The lockdown, which lasted over two months, had a crippling impact on the economy and saw the government spend billions on emergency help schemes to prevent chain bankruptcies and mass layoffs. 

Despite the government's efforts to kickstart the economy, France’s unemployment rate is set to increase by 10 percent by the end of the year. Young people will be the worst affected, according to France’s national institute for statistics, Insee. Rodrigues predicted that the looming downturn would reaffirm people's faith in the 'yellow vest' movement.

“With the coming crisis, people who were doing well financially and who have never had a hard time are going to fall flat on their faces,” Rodrigues said.

'Yellow vest' leading figure Priscillia Ludosky has been participating in protests against police violence and in support of France's hospital sector the past months. Photo: AFP

'Sensationalist media'

Rodrigues became a symbol of the ‘yellow vests’ after he was hit in the eye by what he claimed to be an LBD rubber bullet fired by police (the police refute his accusation, but the authority overseeing the police has launched an investigation into the matter). 

Blinded in one eye, Rodrigues incorporated one of the most jarring features of the protests: their increasingly violent character. The recurring scenes of violence that dominated the protests contributed to the ‘yellow vests’ hogging headlines for months – not just in France, but across the world. 

Images of burning cars, police armed with rubber-bullet guns, violent fist-fights and black-clad protesters smashing ATMs with baseball bats shocked the world. 

But the violence also dominated the media coverage of the protests, which meant what the protesters were saying got less attention.

READ ALSO How the 'yellow vests' made France have a national conversation about police violence

To Ludosky, this was a big problem.

“The media won’t cover anything unless it’s sensationalist,” she said. 

Ludosky authored the online petition that became the catalyst for the ‘yellow vest’ protests. In it, she wrote that the government’s proposed carbon tax was both falsely branded a green policy and was harmful to the many people who depended on their cars to get around every day.

The document went viral and gathered more than one million signatures, and the fluorescent yellow vest that all vehicles in France must be equipped with became the symbol of the masses revolting against the elites.

Ludosky said her main point was lost in the coverage. She was not an angry car-enthusiast defending her right to drive, she was saying that the tax was unfair and would impact the most on the poorest.

“The longer we protested, the more they tried to tell everyone that we don't know what we want. That we were only out there to break things,” she said.

The early days of the movement saw hundreds of 'roundabout protests' in the French provinces. Photo: AFP

'They are there'

The violence also discouraged many of the 'yellow vests' who had little experience with protesting and were shocked by the use of force on both sides.

Danielle Tartakowsky, a professor at the Paris 8 University who specialises in social movements in contemporary France, said it was important to distinguish between the ‘yellow vest’ who still turned up to protests in Paris – often young, keen and ready to go head to head with police – and the ‘yellow vests’ mobilising in less urban areas.

“In the countryside the ‘yellow vest’ movement is the same as it was at the outset,” she said.

In her new book, On est là ! (We’re here), a main ‘yellow vest’ rallying cry, she concludes just that; the movement had changed, but the ‘yellow vests’ were still present.

“That does not mean that they are ready to rally in the same ways, but it would be dangerous and delusional to say that they have disappeared,” she said.

Tartakowsky said that, while the 'yellow vests' successes could seem limited from the outside, they had pushed through important change indirectly by showing that it was possible to force through change.

“Even if they did not win on all points they showed that it was possible to win something, to make the government backpedal,” she said, referring to the carbon tax.

The camp

When the protests started, the roundabout became the main stage for the protesters who did not travel to Paris to make their discontent heard and seen in the capital. 

From June 2019 until March 2020, just before the pandemic hit with full force, Séverine spent most of her free time on a local roundabout where she and some 30 other ‘yellow vests’ had set up a camp.

A teacher in Amiens, a city a couple of hours north of Paris, Séverine was an early believer that the ‘yellow vests’ would be the movement that finally could radically change a system she saw as unjust, undemocratic and unsustainable.

“I passed all my evenings, all my weekends at the camp,” she said.

The camp was a microcosm of the world they hoped to create.

“We cooked together, discussed, we really had some great moments there together,” she said.

They were all kinds of people at the camp; a waiter, a metro driver, a nursery teacher, a few retirees. An Indian student who just needed somewhere to crash for free. 

“It was a very open environment,” Séverine said.

But the problems soon surfaced. The camp, like the movement, swore to a leaderless management style where no one had a final say.

“It was a mess. Obviously, we didn’t manage to make any decisions,” Séverine said.

Violence at protests became a major problem. Photo: AFP

'People are exhausted'

They split themselves into two groups. Oddly enough, the division had little to do with politics.

“It was not about left or right. We actually agreed on the fundamental issues. It was more about strong personalities and people simply not getting along,” she said.

The atmosphere soured. They argued more, discussed less. They went from 30, to 20, to about 10. Then, after the local election in March, just before the pandemic made social distancing the norm, the mayor told them to clear the camp. 

Critics have long said the ‘yellow vests’ lack of leadership was their major, perhaps the decisive, default. How could they push for change when they had no idea what they wanted?

Despite having become so disillusioned with the movement that she no longer knew if she wanted to call herself a ‘yellow vest’ at all, Séverine was not sure this was their main problem. 

“Demonstrating every weekend is tiring. It requires a significant commitment. I think people are exhausted,” she said.

'I was fed up'

In the months that followed the movement’s heyday in early 2019, the protests followed the same pattern as Séverine's camp.

They were increasingly sparse in numbers and the atmosphere increasingly tense and bitter.

“You're walking in a state of complete stress, afraid that someone is aiming at you. You don't hear the messages anymore,” Séverine said.

Five people have lost a hand in the protests. Twenty-five were blinded in an eye. According to government numbers, 2,500 protesters were hurt in the protests by the end of 2019, along with 1,800 police officers.

“No one could imagine that a movement could last this long without losing momentum,” Ludosky said.

“Keeping on going cost a lot to the people who got involved. It's money, time, people lost limbs, couples separated.”

READ ALSO ANALYSIS: French police are not all thugs – they are being placed in an impossible situation

Like many others, she was put off by the violence. In the end, she left her yellow vest in her car.

“I was fed up,” she said. “Every time I wore it I worried about the police controlling me.”

She was not sure if she still believed in the movement.

“It’s complicated. The presidential elections are coming up soon, crying out for Macron’s resignation doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“But the 12th will be the moment to go out on the streets. Not necessarily in Paris, but we need to show something.”

 

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