France faces carbon challenge

President Macron will survive the yellow-vests protests, but his energy policy may not

Even when protests evolve into wider and more complex movements, they tend to be remembered for their initial demands. May 1968 was about sexual liberation, right? If the same goes for the yellow-vests protests, they will go down in history as an uprising against climate-change mitigation and as a turning point for French energy policy. To understand why the protests will have long-lasting impacts on French energy policy we have to look back to the 2017 elections when Emmanuel Macron was an unlikely presidential contender. By setting his energy programme in line with the 2015 "Loi de Transition Energétique pour la Croissance Verte" (Energy Transition Law for Green Growth), he appeared more p