Yet what does pension reform have to do with a reservoir in Western France? Why did the scenes look so similar in Paris and Sainte-Soline despite the fact that they had radically different causes? Some of this is probably explained by the involvement of far-Left agitators in both events. Yet this explanation only begs the question: why are these radical elements so easily able to whip up a mob?

Perhaps the best way to understand what is happening in France — and why it may have broader importance for other European countries — is to consider when the recent protests actually started. Without much fanfare, on 16th October of last year, tens of thousands of Parisians took to the streets. The protests were organised by Left-wing opposition groups, including the same trade unions that organised the recent pension reform protests. Their concern? Rising living costs. Similar protests followed in January, with thousands of workers marching across the country to demand solutions to the cost-of-living crisis.

Polling has been indicating that this has been a major issue for some time. A European-wide poll taken in October last year showed that a majority of voters in Europe’s four largest countries expected social unrest and public protests in the coming months due to rising living costs. Perhaps these voters’ prognostications were not so much accurate as self-fulfilling. Interestingly, the poll showed that the problems were getting particularly acute in France. In Britain and Germany one in five people said that they were coping well with rising living costs; in Poland and France only one in twenty gave the same response.

All this leads to the conclusion that pensions and reservoirs might only be precipitating factors in the social unrest we are seeing in France. The real cause may well be rising living costs. The first event of the French Revolution — the so-called Day of the Tiles — was nominally caused by aristocrats refusing to relinquish their fiscal privilege. But the events were precipitated by rising living costs, in turn caused by poor harvests, leading to high costs for bread.

This raises the uncomfortable prospect that what we are seeing may not be unique to France. Living costs are rising across Europe, driven by an energy crisis partly caused by western sanctions against Russia. Notably, in January, electricity prices were raised by 15% in France; without government subsidies they would have doubled. Meanwhile, gas imports into Europe this year are at historic lows. Liquefied natural gas has replaced some of the Russian gas, but not nearly enough. This suggests that we have a hard winter ahead of us — likely much harder than the last. What we are seeing in France may be the beginning of much larger social unrest across Europe in the coming months.

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Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional, and the author of The Reformation in Economics

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