PARIS -- How ever could it have come to this? Hundreds of kilometers of traffic jams gridlocking Paris, elegant shops empty of customers just two weeks before Christmas, policemen teargassing rock-throwing demonstrators and a society alienated from the government that it recently elected to power with a thumping majority?


Let us be clear about one thing: This is not a repeat of the events of 1968, which have gone down in the collective European memory as an "uprising." Trade unions and student groups may be at the forefront of today's unrest, but their objectives are extremely limited. Their protests are essentially an act of self-defense, an attempt to preserve a generous state-funded welfare system against government efforts to cut back spending and make France live within its means.


Many politicians and commentators across Europe have interpreted France's social convulsions as a popular outcry against the model of Europe constructed in the European Union's Maastricht Treaty of 1991. The treaty set a deadline of January 1999 for the launch of a single European currency, and to meet that target France and most other countries are engaged in drastic budget-cutting exercises so that they reduce their deficits and public debts to the levels stipulated at Maastricht.


There is certainly something to this argument. It is significant that strikes and other forms of protest have broken out in Belgium, where the government is also trying to cut public expenditures. Austria's government collapsed in October over its proposals to reduce spending. There are similar social and political tensions in Italy.


However, one should not blame Maastricht for everything. The French public sees President Jacques Chirac and his center-right government as having broken their promises. Chirac was elected to power last May on a platform that pledged lower unemployment, lower taxes, economic growth and just about everything short of eternal happiness.


Suddenly, in late October, he reversed his policies. Having made virtually no effort to prepare public opinion in advance, he announced that France's most urgent need was to cut its budget deficit. Austerity, not prosperity, was the order of the day.


There is almost unanimous agreement that, irrespective of Maastricht, any French government would have to take the unpopular measures outlined by Chirac. Without them, the entire social security system would collapse under the weight of its vast debts.


But the government should have taken greater care to explain the problem to the public. Instead, an increasingly wide gulf now separates French society from its rulers.


The existence of this gulf became clear soon after Chirac's election when it was revealed that Prime Minister Alain Juppe and his family had been living in lavish apartments subsidized by the city of Paris. If you rise to the top in France, you are well looked after by the state, but ordinary people do not look kindly on privilege when they are being asked to tighten their own belts.


The most pressing task that faces Chirac and his government is no longer cutting the budget but reconnecting the institutions of French power with society. There is a bitter sense of betrayal across the land. It is bad news for France but, with the whole Maastricht enterprise of monetary and political union at stake, it is even worse news for Europe.