'A tricky day' ahead for French PM as he meets with unions amid social unrest

And with me in the studio is our international affairs editor, Rochelle Ferguson. Rochelle, the stakes are very high today for the French government, aren't they? They are indeed. It's safe to say that this is gearing up to be a particularly intense week for the French Prime Minister, Matignon, as we saw in that report there. Sébastien Lecornu then operating on this social conference that's supposed to show that he has his ear to the ground, that he's attentive to the concerns of protesters. 146,000 out this weekend, less than on Thursday. But of course, you know, the protests are far from extinguished. It's going to be a tricky week for Sébastien Le Corneau. We mentioned in that report this idea of the SMIC or the minimum wage in France. Le Corneau, of course, has the power to raise the minimum wage. The problem is, if you look at the figures, things don't always add up. There are about 2.2 million French people who currently get the minimum wage. OK, so that's about 12.4 percent. Of the working population, the question is what happens to the other wages within the country, those who are perhaps earning a bit more, perhaps 2000 or so, and is still struggling in terms of purchasing power and having enough money to get to the end of the month. It's far more difficult. He has far less to wiggle room when it comes to raising those salaries there. And so you can see it's going to be a tricky day with unions and. Business leaders for Sébastien Le Corneau, you know, that's without saving the fact that the obvious the French government is cash scrapped ultimately. So the questions of where that money will come from is also another hill that he'll need to climb just in terms of what's at stake. This meeting, if he plays it right, could ultimately shape the way that protest movements go from here. Are we going to see, you know, protests quelled slightly with less and less people out every Saturday? Or are we going to see, you know, another growth of. Anger and people, you know, feeling that the government is not listening to them at all. The figure, you know, of those protests, I said, was less on Thursday, but we could see more momentum gathering, a lot riding on today, that meeting, this social conference with business leaders and, of course, with unions. We'll have more on that for you later.