In a much-anticipated speech on Tuesday, French Prime Minister François Bayrou proposed a range of measures to tackle France's exploding deficit, saying that the country's debt is increasing by €5,000 every second.
"It's late but there is still time," Bayrou said, warning that France was facing a "moment of truth".
Bayrou's plan includes limiting tax breaks for the wealthy and slashing civil service jobs, but it was his plan to revoke two public holidays that garnered the most headlines.
He suggested scrapping Easter Monday and May 8 – Victory Day in France, marking Nazi Germany’s surrender in 1945 – but said he was open to suggestions.
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The announcement immediately provoked outrage from the French public – three out of four opposed the change in a poll published Wednesday – as well as politicians from across France's political spectrum.
Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National party, called the proposal a "direct attack on our history, our roots and French workers".
Lionel Benharous, mayor of the town of Les Lilas – home to the Romainville fort, where thousands of Resistance fighters were detained during World War II – spoke out against the “dangerous recklessness” of such a proposal in the current climate.
“At a time when racism and anti-Semitism are regaining a deeply alarming following, when our republican values are being undermined, and when the far right is in power or approaching power in so many countries, deciding that May 8 will no longer be a public holiday is not just an economic measure, but is exacerbating the threats to our democracy,” Benharous said in a Facebook post.
Sophie Binet, leader of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) – one of France’s oldest and largest trade unions – also spoke out out against removing national holiday status from May 8, saying it would be a "very serious" decision to stop marking "the day of victory over Nazism".
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Not always a public holiday
But despite the heated reactions and attachment that many in France demonstrated in reaction to the proposals, some have pointed out that marking these dates has a complex history.
"The commemoration of May 8 has not always been a public holiday," French historian Denis Peschanski pointed out in a Facebook post.
He pointed out that commemorations celebrating the German surrender in 1945 and the end of hostilities was initially "supposed to take place on a Sunday, so either May 8, if it fell on a Sunday, or the following Sunday".
It wasn't until 1953 that the government decided to make May 8 a public holiday to honour the Resistance movement, explained Peschanski.
Six years later, General Charles de Gaulle decided to abolish the public holiday but kept it as a national day of commemoration.
“He chose instead to highlight June 18 (when de Gaulle urged the French to resist Nazi occupation) and the Resistance movement, even though he never made the day of the appeal a public holiday,” Peschanski said.
One of his successors, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, went a step further in 1975 by scrapping the commemoration altogether in the name of European unity and Franco-German friendship – a move that sparked strong reactions from former Resistance fighters and deportees and the associations representing them.
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During his presidency, François Mitterrand decided to reinstate the day of commemoration and make it a public holiday once again.
For Peschanski, there are other dates from the war that even more symbolic, notably the Allied landings at Normandy on D-Day a month later.
"May 8, whether a public holiday or not, has never been a key date in the commemoration of World War II," he said.
"The same cannot be said for June 6, 1944, which became an international commemoration under François Mitterrand in 1984, but has never been a public holiday."
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Few nations mark May 8
Peschanski’s colleague Raphaël Spina, also a specialist in World War II, noted in a Facebook post that France is only one of three nations that officially commemorate May 8 nationwide.
"Many countries do not mark May 8 as a public holiday, in particular the United Kingdom and the United States, who aren’t accused of scorning the anti-Nazi struggle of which they were key players, or major victims," he wrote.
May 8 is a public holiday in only two other European countries apart from France: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Bulgarian Armed Forces Day is marked with military parades on May 6 and the Netherlands celebrates Liberation Day and the end of Nazi occupation on May 5. Luxembourg celebrates Europe Day on May 9 while in Slovenia, April 27 is the Day of Uprising Against Occupation.
Spina also highlighted that while public holidays are supposed to be used for visiting the war memorial, there are hardly any people present at these sites on May 8, “apart from schoolchildren taken there by their teachers”.
"At this rate, what's the point of having a public holiday when a media event and an official ceremony would be just as useful for remembrance?" he asked.
By the process of "elimination", Spina said, there are not many other holidays that France could abolish.
"Nobody is going to propose abolishing the public holiday status of family celebrations such as Christmas, Easter [Sunday] or All Saints' Day, or religious holidays such as the Feast of Ascension and Assumption Day (commemorating the Virgin Mary's ascent into heaven)," he said.
'No religious significance' for Easter Monday
Bayrou has justified his proposal to abolish Easter Monday as a public holiday by saying it has "no religious significance". Legally a public holiday since 1886, Easter Monday is not marked by any state-sanctioned religious celebration.
Some see Easter Monday as a remnant of the Octave of Easter, in which a mass is repeated each of the eight days following Easter Sunday, one of the most important days for Christians.
Easter Monday became a public holiday in France in 1886 and is now celebrated as such in 23 of the 27 EU countries.
While some consider it a key part of Catholic tradition to mark Easter over more than just one Sunday, others agree with Bayrou. The Monday after Easter "has no religious significance today", says religious historian Odon Vallet.
A distraction?
As the debate rages about whether to abolish public holidays, some observers are calling it a political distraction.
"Bayrou's proposal to abolish two public holidays is a red rag so that it's all we'll be talking about for days on end, without the French people realising all the other reductions announced today in health and public services," wrote Marine Tondelier, leader of France's Green Party, in a post on X.
France has 11 public holidays, just shy of the European Union average of 11.7 national holidays a year (Lithuania has the most, with two independence days).
Workers in EU countries benefit from between nine and 16 public holidays, according to the European labour authority EURES, excluding those that fall on a Sunday.
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This article has been translated from the original in French by Vitoria Barreto.
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