France: Protests consolidate Emmanuel Macron’s crisis – 03/28/2023 – World

Less numerous and less violent, the 10th day of strikes and demonstrations against Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pension reform brought together at least 750,000 people in about 200 cities in France this Tuesday (28), according to the Ministry of the Interior. Last Thursday, there were 1 million on the streets.

According to the inter-union board that articulates the protests since January and has already called for a new mobilization for April 6, this day mobilized 2 million people, against 3.5 million last week.

The protests were marked by a large police force, increased after the fires and the depredation of stores and public furniture seen in last week’s demonstration. The Minister of the Interior, Gérard Darmanin, summoned 13,000 officials to accompany the acts on Tuesday – an apparatus, according to him, unprecedented.

He reported that French security forces had identified around 1,000 protesters responsible for last week’s riot, which led shopkeepers and bank branches to erect fences to protect their windows and facades.

Even so, this Tuesday’s day was not free of significant conflicts, such as those that occurred in Paris, Toulouse, Rennes, Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Nantes, especially after the union leaders considered the acts closed, and the streets were taken by students and black blocs.

In Nantes, a bank branch was set on fire by demonstrators, who erected barricades that were also set on fire. In Toulouse, rubbish bags and street furniture were set on fire, and the police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters — resources also used by police forces in Rennes.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Palace of Versailles — some of the main postcards of the French capital — were closed due to the demonstrations, which brought together 93 thousand people, according to the city hall, against 119 thousand last week. The demonstrations in the capital ended early in the evening, in Praça da Nação, with clashes between black blocs and police, fire in garbage piles, tear gas bombs and at least 55 people arrested.

The approximately 10 tons of garbage that turned the city of lights into an open-air dump and turned into bonfires in the last protests, however, should disappear in the coming days. That’s because the CGT (General Confederation of Work) announced the end of the street sweepers’ strike in the capital, after three weeks of stoppage. The collectors return to work this Wednesday (29).

In recent days, union leaders have proposed measures to the French government to cool down the mood of the country’s demonstrators. Laurent Berger, secretary general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) proposed to Macron to put the reform “on pause” for a month or two and seek interlocutors to mediate the French political and social crisis. “We need to find a way out,” he told France Inter radio. “The idea is to enter into a mediation process.”

The proposal was well received by centrist parties, such as the Democratic Movement, whose leader, Jean-Paul Mattei, declared it important to find someone who “has a certain distance” from the two poles of the crisis, government and protesters, and can be a “link to promote dialogue”.

Government spokesman Olivier Véran publicly rejected the proposed mediation: “There is no need for mediation to talk to the unions.” But Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has announced that she will invite the leaders of the inter-union board for a talk next week.

In this context of political and social crisis, President Macron’s popularity dropped below the 30% mark and reached a level considered alarming: 28%, according to the barometer of the French Institute of Opinion Research (Ifop). The mark is close to the lowest in the history of the French leader, 26%, reached in November 2018, during the yellow vest crisis. Borne accompanied him in this decline: his popularity reached 29%, according to the same institute.