After the defeat of France in , a black market developed in both German-occupied territory and the zone libre controlled by the Vichy regime. Diversions from official channels and clandestine supply chains fed the black market. It came to be seen as "an essential means for survival, as popular resistance to state tyranny invading daily life, as a system for German exploitation, and as a means for unscrupulous producers and dealers to profit from French misery.
It later became a civil disobedience movement against rationing and attempts to centralize distribution, then eventually evading Nazi food restrictions became a national pastime. Those who could not, such as long-term psychiatric patients, simply did not survive. Vichy market regulation was the first French attempt at economic planning. The parallel economy undermined the official centralized attempts to regulate the production, storage, transport, quantity, quality and price of food.
Even after the liberation of France and the end of the Second World War, problems with supply kept rationing and the black market in operation until French politics were very unstable in the s.
Subsequent changes to the French Constitution under the Fourth and Fifth Republic made it more difficult to hold a vote on a motion of no confidence and thereby force the dissolution of the government. In the 6 February crisis multiple far-rightist leagues rioted on the Place de la Concorde near the French National Assembly. The police shot and killed 15 demonstrators. Elections were called over this, even though a popular prime minister had just been elected.
Two million workers seized factories and stores in a wave of strikes, brought on by dissatisfaction with the state of the Depression-era French economy. Blum negotiated the reforms of the Matignon Accords with the labour unions. After inflation was a recurring theme in the French economy. During the war black markets arose when government imposed quotas and regulations to control supply and distribution, and demand exceeded supply; [ 10 ] a phenomenon described as "the free market at its most brutal.
