Nicolas — the good European guy who can’t take it anymore

“Nicolas is paying” has become the political slogan of the fed-up French taxpayer who is working hard while watching his country crumble and his money fund a system he no longer believes in.

“Nicolas is paying”: Nicolas, 30, is becoming a social phenomenon. This very common French first name has now come to represent, on social media, the honest and hard-working citizen who is fed up with paying social contributions to a country that is going downhill and financing uncontrolled immigration with exorbitant welfare benefits. Accused by the mainstream press of being supported by the far Right, the movement has already spread to the United Kingdom, ‘The European Conservative’ notes.

Seemingly harmless and devoid of any hidden meaning, the name Nicolas has become, in just a few weeks, the rallying cry of an entire generation of people who feel they have been sacrificed. On X (banned in Russia), there is now an account called @NicolasQuiPaie, which has tens of thousands of followers. Stickers and T-shirts have been produced, and Nicolas is now making waves on X or TikTok.

Nicolas is the average French citizen: he works and pays his contributions and taxes honestly, thereby enabling the famous French ‘social model’ to continue, without ever seeing any of the benefits himself. Nicolas pays, but he receives no social assistance and has to make do with increasingly inadequate public services: non-existent public safety, a failing education system, and hospitals in freefall. For conservative editorialist Ivan Rioufol, Nicolas “symbolises the generation of thirty-somethings who work, ask nothing of the state, break nothing, but always have to pay for others… while being called racist!”

The celebrity of Nicolas might be traced back to a speech given a few months ago by Gérault Verny, a member of parliament for the Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR), a party allied with the Rassemblement National (RN). He concluded his speech in the National Assembly during a debate on government spending with the following words: “Every time a euro of public money is wasted, Nicolas is paying.” Since then, ‘Nicolas is paying’ has become a political slogan.

Who are Nicolas’ targets? First and foremost the ‘boomers’ — the post-war generation, who experienced France at the height of its prosperity, now enjoy comfortable pensions, and did virtually nothing to prevent the country’s collapse. The boomers targeted by Nicolas are also fervent supporters of Emmanuel Macron. Under the French pay-as-you-go pension system, ‘Nicolas is paying’ for the boomers’ pensions — even though he himself is not at all sure that he will be able to afford a comfortable retirement in a few years’ time.

Finally, Nicolas attacks immigrants, both legal and illegal, who receive social assistance and benefits that he never sees, but which he finances through his taxes. He would like the government to finally decide to put an end to the billions spent on state medical aid to cure illegal immigrants. He’s desperately waiting, but nothing changes.

Where things get complicated is that France is not the only country affected by this phenomenon. Imagine that Nicolas also has a British cousin — Nick, 30 years old. Nick is fed up with paying the rent for Karim who, far from contributing to the national effort, sends his entire salary to his family in Somalia every week with a click of a button thanks to Wire. Across the Channel, Nick and Nicolas reach out to each other and dare to believe in a better tomorrow.

…The poverty rate in France has hit a record high, with close to 10 million people living below the monetary poverty threshold in 2023, according to new figures from the French statistics bureau INSEE. The rate is the highest since INSEE began its poverty indicator report in 1996.

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