Jordan Fievez was sitting at the kitchen table of his rented home in a Picardy village, worrying about fuel prices. “Halfway through the month, I’m already overdrawn,” he said of rising bills and the cost of diesel for his 50km round trip to work.
The 27-year-old works in a factory making one of France’s store-cupboard favourites, dried mashed potato mix. He is one of those workers Emmanuel Macron praised for “feeding the nation” during the Covid pandemic. But even with Macron’s €100 handout for “inflation compensation” and the government’s cap on gas and electricity prices – which has kept French prices from rising as fast as in most other European countries – Fievez felt “exhausted” by the struggle to make ends meet. With two children and a partner who earns the minimum wage at a sport shop in a distant town, “it seems like we’re working just to pay for fuel costs to get to work”, he said. In this rural area with few services, it was a 10km drive just to buy milk.
