A Republic of 246 Cheeses: France and the Art of Becoming Ungovernable

Eleni Zampelis,

Athens, Greece

The National Assembly in Paris

Charles de Gaulle's saying: "How can you govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?" was never actually about cheese. It was about the French paradox: a state whose cultural wealth is matched only by a reluctance to be governed. In 2025, this saying has tragically gone stale. 

The French form a republic of cheese in the most literal political sense: crumbly, endlessly diverse, and most of all, resistant to oneness. The failure of Prime Minister François Bayrou's government after nine months in power was not an exception to the rule but yet another victim in a string of 4 prime ministers that France has cycled through in the past year. His €44 billion austerity plan - freezing pensions, abolishing holidays and pinching pay - was intended to pull France back from fiscal brinkmanship. Instead, it brought together  a fatal consensus: 364 voted against him, just 194 for him. It was among the few times when the far right, far left, and majority of the center conspired.

Here, Bayrou was not an inspiring leader but rather one that was overwhelmed by a legislature which now consumes governments at almost ritual speed. Meanwhile, the economic figures remain horrific. France's public debt floats around 114% of GDP, or about €3.3 trillion. Debt servicing alone now costs over €60 billion a year, about 7 percent of the budget, and is projected to exceed €100 billion within 4 years, swallowing whole ministries, and leaving the state with little leeway to spend on defense, education, or infrastructure.

France's social model that has been its pride - at 57 percent of GDP government expenditure, the highest in Europe - can no longer be sustained through prosperity, but only at the expense of borrowing. In his last speech, Bayrou understood the existential nature of the crisis: "Submission to debt is akin to submission by force of arms… at the mercy of our creditors, owing to a debt strangling us, we forfeit our liberty." His warning was not only economic but also sovereign: France is at risk of trading parliamentary and presidential power for the intangible might of bond markets.

But austerity is a political poison. The left excoriates it as an abandonment of the working classes. The far right condemns it as an elite plot against "ordinary France." Even centrists flinch at the electoral suicide of raising pension ages or cutting benefits. And so every prime minister becomes a Cassandra: correct in analysis, doomed in action.

France has replaced four prime ministers in under two years, each staying in power for a shorter time than the gestation period of aged Comté cheese.

At the same time, the streets are not just agitated - they are rebellious. The "Block Everything" demonstrations in September had highways shut down, trains stopped in their tracks, and buses burning. More than 80,000 police were deployed, and more than 200 arrests were made in a single day. Most astonishing of all was the coalition of the people: pensioners marched with anarchists, trade unionists with nationalist militancy. France is no longer a nation of left and right; it is a nation united only in refusal.

This brings with it the larger, more perturbing question: what happens when repudiation is the unifying principle of a democracy? The Assembly cannot legislate, the streets will not abide, the executive cannot command. The state exists, but its capacity to rule decays with each successive month. This is a sovereignty paradox - rich in theory, nonexistent in practice.

The phenomenon, however, is not new. The paralysis evoked the collapse of the Fourth Republic, when 21 successive governments occupied power in 12 years, unable to deal with the twin crises of colonial war and domestic discord. That weakness did not result in rebirth but in dissolution: war-hero De Gaulle returned to power in 1958 and reconstituted the constitution with emergency powers, establishing the hyper-presidency of the Fifth Republic. Macron is mired today in an inverted tragedy: he has the sweeping powers of De Gaulle’s constitution, without the legitimacy to wield them.

France's wealth has always been its diversity: its cheeses, its dialects, its stubborn regions, its intellectual disputations. However, that which was a virtue has now become a centrifugal force. All parties hold onto their own distinctive flavor, and are not prepared to melt into a nation's meat. The National Assembly today is no longer a body deliberative but a cheese board: pungent, varied but utterly incapable of forming one meal.

The dangers are tangible. Unchecked, ratings agencies downgrade French debt, pushing borrowing costs even higher. Investors retreat from uncertainty, suffocating growth. The Republic risks staggering into a crisis cycle interrupted by periods of street revolt. And insidiously, Europe would lose a strategic pillar. A lost France is not a national tremor, but rather a continental earthquake.

And so we get back to De Gaulle's joke. He could joke about the 246 cheeses because he thought that he could still lord over them. Macron is confronted with the harsh truth: France has doubled the cheeses, and each of them will no longer be on the same plate. Can a country so proud of its diversity turn plurality into unity? Or will its richness curdle into disintegration?

The response is uncertain. But if the Fifth Republic continues to crumble, its epitaph is already written - How do you govern a nation which produces 246 varieties of cheese?