For three weekends running, the streets of France have filled with people who say they can no longer make ends meet. What began in September as a protest by school pupils over crumbling classrooms and unfair university admissions has since grown into a broader revolt against the cost of living. On 24 October alone, the French Interior Ministry counted more than 400,000 demonstrators, while the CGT trade union claimed close to twice that number. Moreover, the anger has not stayed within France's borders. Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Albania have all seen marches, and in Italy a general strike on 30 October brought tens of thousands of students and workers onto the streets of more than 40 cities.
Sri Lankans will find these scenes rather familiar. Barely four years ago, our own streets told a similar story. In 2022, queues for fuel and cooking gas stretched for kilometres, power cuts ran for hours on end and food prices climbed beyond the reach of ordinary households. The country defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in its history, and the Aragalaya that took root on Galle Face Green eventually drove a sitting President from office. Then, as in Europe now, the movement was led largely by the young, organised through social media and driven by a sense that nobody in power was listening.
Admittedly, the comparison has limits. France and Italy are wealthy nations with established welfare systems and access to European financial markets, whereas Sri Lanka in 2022 had run out of dollars altogether. Nevertheless, the underlying grievance is similar. In both cases, people were told that the national accounts demanded sacrifice, even as they watched their own household accounts collapse.
Indeed, France now faces the very dilemma that Sri Lanka has wrestled with since 2022. Investors want higher returns to hold French debt and are pressing Paris to rein in spending. At the same time, protesters want more money for schools, hospitals and public services, together with relief from rising prices. Italy faces a version of the same squeeze, sharpened by defence spending that many protesters openly oppose. There is no easy way to satisfy both the bond market and the street, and governments that pretend otherwise tend to lose the trust of both.
Therein lies the first lesson for Sri Lanka. Our recovery under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme has been real, and the Fund itself has acknowledged it. However, stability measured in reserves and primary surpluses is not the same as relief felt in the kitchen. Higher taxes, cost-reflective electricity tariffs and fuel price increases, including the sharp hike in March this year, have steadied the books while squeezing household budgets. With the IMF projecting growth to slow to around three per cent this year, and the programme approaching its final reviews, the Government should remember that public patience is finite.
The second lesson concerns the young. In France, it was teenagers at the school gates who lit the spark. Sri Lanka's young people carried the Aragalaya too, and many have since watched friends leave the country in search of work. A generation that believes its education is underfunded and its future lies elsewhere will not wait patiently forever. Investment in schools, universities and jobs is therefore not a luxury to defer until fiscal targets are met; it is part of what keeps a society stable.
The third lesson is about how governments respond. France has deployed some 70,000 police, banned marches in several cities and moved protests in Paris to the city's edge. Italy, meanwhile, has sent paratroopers to patrol Milan. Looting and arson on the fringes of largely peaceful marches cannot, of course, be tolerated. Yet policing can contain a crowd; it cannot answer a grievance. Sri Lanka learnt in 2022 that emergency regulations and curfews merely postponed the reckoning. Equally, blaming convenient outsiders, as some have done with migrants in Europe, only deepens divisions and leaves the real problems untouched.
Finally, there is a warning for those who govern on the strength of a popular mandate. The present administration owes much of its rise to the very discontent that filled the streets in 2022. That places on it a particular duty to keep listening, to explain its choices honestly and to ensure that the burden of adjustment falls fairly. Europe's leaders, several of them facing elections, are discovering that public anger can simmer for years before boiling over.
Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price to learn that lesson. It would be a tragedy to have to learn it a second time.