[EN IMAGES] Incidents during the May Day demonstration in Paris

PARIS | Numerous clashes pitted police forces against very mobile groups of young people dressed in black on Sunday afternoon on the sidelines of the May Day demonstration in Paris, in which thousands of people participated, AFP noted.

The first tensions took place only a few minutes after the departure of the procession, at the beginning of the afternoon. A very mobile group of demonstrators, wearing black clothes, gloves and masks, broke away from the main procession to clash with the police.

They tried to put up a barricade using palisades and attacked shop windows.

According to an AFP journalist, around twenty brands, mostly McDonald’s, insurers, real estate agencies or banks, were damaged while a car was broken into.

The demonstrators also threw projectiles, including fruit, at the police. The police tried to disperse them with tear gas.

This demonstration was organized at the call of trade unions, with demands for the issues of wages, public services, social protection and ecological transition.

Many left-wing leaders, such as the leader of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came third in the first round of the presidential election on April 10, and the boss of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure were present in the procession.

Throughout France, several tens of thousands of people marched for May Day, in a very political context after the presidential election, which saw the victory, in the second round on April 24, of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron against the candidate of extreme right Marine Le Pen.

In Marseille, carrying a flag “for the popular union” (from the left), Martine Haccoun, a 65-year-old retired doctor, explained that she had come “to show that Macron was not given a blank check for five years, we wanted to block Mrs. Le Pen ”.

Incidents also took place in Nantes, in the west of the country. Ultra-left militants “committed a certain number of degradations and there was the intervention of the police to disperse them”, indicated the prefecture. Real estate agency windows were smashed, noted a photographer.

Unions and associations highlight their desire for a more social and ecological policy.

The pension reform is in particular one of the points of tension of this day. Mr Macron is considering raising the retirement age from the current 62 to 64 or 65.