"Important to restore pride to the people": the yellow vests' grievance books accessible in the archives

Since Friday, May 2, the more than 19,000 books of grievances , written during the Great National Debate of 2019, which took place after the "yellow vest" crisis, have been accessible to all at the local archives.

This citizen consultation, held between January 15 and March 15, 2019, was President Emmanuel Macron's response to the popular protest movement at the end of 2018, against the high cost of living, the destruction of public services, inequalities and the shortcomings of democracy.

The availability of these documents is a good thing for Annick, who was involved in the mobilization at the time: "It was a way to get out what we had inside us, a way to express the suffering," explains this resident of Oise.

Inside one of the notebooks in Beauvais, we find, for example, demands such as the return of the wealth solidarity tax (ISF) or the freezing of fuel taxes.

Jean-Pierre also shares this observation but still regrets not having been sufficiently listened to by the government.

"We didn't get much. Pay increases are all well and good... But they increase, and then they steal a portion from us, and we always come back to the same point," says this former yellow vest.

The ability to consult these documents remains an important first step, however. The Ministry of Culture, which published a decree in the Official Journal on Wednesday to open these notebooks, told AFP that it was possible to "consult them on site or obtain a copy of these documents, the originals of which are kept in the Departmental Archives and a digital version in the National Archives."

Although this possibility was previously reserved for researchers, the request for opening to the public was made in particular by the mayor of Auger-Saint-Vincent in Aisne.

"It's extremely important to restore pride to the French people who participated in this. It was unprecedented: we haven't had anything like this since 1945, and before that in 1789," emphasizes Fabrice Dalongeville.

These citizen notebooks could be put online "during 2026," according to Emmanuel Macron, but the government wants to anonymize them first.

The rapid opening of archives to all, without exemption, "is exceptional but is justified by the sense of public interest surrounding the great national debate and by the public nature of the contributions at the time," the Ministry of Culture told AFP. The legal time limit for archives of this type is 50 years.