1 May

We French often prefer debating principles to solving practical problems. Take the example of working on 1 May.

It all begins with a handful of somewhat overzealous labour inspectors in certain parts of the country—Vendée, Charente, Lyon and Paris—who, instead of respecting a tolerance embedded in national practice since 1947 and governed by several agreements signed by the social partners in the craft sector, fined around ten bakeries in 2023, out of 34,000 across France. Those bakeries were subsequently cleared. A few garden centres and florists were also fined, out of a total of 8,000.

When these highly marginal and localised inspections were repeated in 2024 and 2025, employer organisations—usually so quick to denounce the sheer size of the Labour Code—demanded that several more pages be added to it in order to put an end to what they described as “intolerable widespread legal uncertainty”.

The first elevation into a matter of principle.

Political parties on the right and in the centre then entered the fray. Instead of seeking to resolve a specific, localised problem through a proportionate response—for example, by encouraging the labour inspectors concerned to exercise greater social judgement, including through trade unions—they turned the issue into a political question of principle: “People are being prevented from working in this country; employment law must not obstruct the right to work.”

And so the very same people who had pledged to make regulatory simplification a national priority now also sought to resolve a one-off problem through a new general law, accompanied by a decree issued by the Conseil d’État.

The second elevation into a matter of principle.

Finally, left-wing parties and trade unions in turn transformed the issue into a national cause, denouncing an attack on employment law, even though the matter was simply an attempt—admittedly clumsy, but an attempt nonetheless—to resolve a limited and isolated problem.

The third elevation into a matter of principle.

There are two lessons to be drawn from this very French drama:

1. The French of the Republic and the French of the Ancien Régime are much the same: instead of resolving a local problem locally, they appeal to the central state. But because a new general law never satisfies everyone, it is constantly amended. “The central government is forever changing a few regulations or laws,” Tocqueville observed of the Ancien Régime. The republican habit is no different.

2. Our national tendency to turn every specific problem into a matter of principle does not make it any easier—now any more than in the past—for us to resolve such issues collectively and by consensus. Principles are not open to compromise, and so even the smallest question, rather than being assessed in its proper proportion, becomes a matter of identity.

Tocqueville again, describing our national mindset, among rulers and ruled alike: “the same attraction to general theory, the same contempt for existing facts.”