Instead, Mr Macron looks likely to go down as just the latest French president to abandon reforms in the face of street protests. The essential French contradiction — the demand for lower taxes and better public services — will remain unresolved. Indeed, things could get a lot worse. Protests and street violence have the potential to rumble on for months, creating a sense of permanent crisis. Even if France’s cities calm down quickly, the risk that Mr Macron could be succeeded by a president of the far-right or far-left has clearly increased.

Faced with these developments in France, Germany is highly unlikely to commit to the kind of ambitious EU reforms outlined by Mr Macron. A decade of economic crises in southern Europe has left German politicians highly suspicious of anything that looks like a “transfer union” that might see German taxpayers permanently subsidising welfare in less solvent EU nations.

A dynamic and successful Macron-led France might have overcome this German scepticism (which is shared by the Netherlands and much of northern Europe) — and helped propel the eurozone towards the “economic government” that the French are arguing for. But events on the streets of Paris will confirm German prejudices that the French state is unreformable.