The yellow vest movement (gilets jaunes) appeared as a reaction to the reforms of Emmanuel Macron. At first, the protests started as a working and middle-class movement against green fuel taxes (Cigainero, 2018). However, the more people supported the movement, the more demand they had. Hence, some wanted a raise in the current minimum wage and to dissolve the National Assembly to hold new elections. Even though the protest presented themselves as neither left nor right, according to Driscoll, they “Do not identify with parties or nationalism, and they accept the reality of climate change” (2022, 6). Nevertheless, their ideology was based on rejecting the president’s reforms, and the later protests had Communist flags and anti-capitalist chants. Both parties supported the vests, the far-right of Marine Le Pen and the far-left of Jean-Luc Mélencho, but neither became leading in the process.
The rise of far-right supporters emerged due to gilets jaunes, considering the latest elections of 2022 when La Pen gained 41.46% against 33.9% in 2017. It proves that the ratio of social populism changed, and the far-right groups might become more active with the support of parties. As a functional result of the protests, the drop in fuel tax was achieved after Le Grand Debat National and Le Vrai Debat (Driscoll, 2021). However, the immediate success of the yellow vests is the influence on Marcon’s reformist policy. His party suffers a decline in the party ID and a loss of the assembly majority (Bale, 2017). It is evident by the failure of his alliance to keep the absolute majority in the voting of the French National Assembly, meaning that the change in the political system of France is inevitable due to the changing social view that began with the gilets jaunes.
References
Bale, T. (2017) European politics: A comparative introduction. Palgrave.
Cigainero, J. (2018). Who are France’s yellow vest protesters, and what do they want? NPR.
Driscoll, D. (2022). Populism and carbon tax justice: The yellow vest movement in France, Social Problems, 1-21.