France’s Fuel-Tax Protests Expose the Limits of Macron’s Mandate
France’s prime minister announced major concessions on Tuesday, but the “yellow vest” protesters don’t plan to quit anytime soon.
PARIS—The grassroots social uprising that’s taken hold across France in the past three weeks is not an ideal crisis for Emmanuel Macron.
The youthful French president excels at lofty, often abstract, rhetoric; at symbolic gestures; at grand moments, such as the one last month for Armistice Day, when he united most leaders of the free world and gave a speech beneath the Arc de Triomphe—a monument damaged by unruly protesters last weekend.
What Macron lacks is a common touch, an ability to charm citizens and make them feel they’re part of the story. So it’s not entirely surprising that a nascent, leaderless, and sometimes violent popular revolt, the “yellow vest” movement, has caused the first political crisis of his presidency and its first
