French government and unions camped on their irreconcilable positions Tuesday for the tenth day of demonstrations against a very unpopular pension reform, in a climate electrified by the growing violence that the police forces deployed in very large numbers are trying to curb.
Opposition to this emblematic reform of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term, which delays the retirement age from 62 to 64, has become more radical since the government passed the text without a vote in the Assembly, exposing to no-confidence motions that failed on March 20 to overthrow him.
Since then, the demonstrations have been punctuated by increasing violence, with in particular many police officers, gendarmes, thugs and demonstrators injured or fires in public buildings.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced an “unprecedented security device” for Tuesday with “13,000 police and gendarmes, including 5,500 in Paris” and government spokesman Olivier Véran assured Wednesday that the executive was ” the bulwark against illegitimate violence”.
At the same time, blockades, pickets and demonstrations have continued for days, disrupting the fuel supply to certain French regions, and certain roads or logistics depots. Road blockages were in place Tuesday morning around Rennes and Nantes where traffic was very delicate.
Train traffic was severely disrupted on Tuesday morning and in the sky, civil aviation once again asked airlines on Tuesday to give up part of their flights on Thursday and Friday, in particular at Paris-Orly, due to the strike. of air traffic controllers against the reform.
At Lille station, Yasmine Mounib, 19, a student, up at 4 a.m. for a class at 8 a.m. which she will still miss, says she “agrees” with the demands of the strikers. “But they could leave the morning trains for high school students, students: for me, it’s costing me my schooling,” she explains.
More than 15% of service stations in France were on Monday short of gasoline or diesel.
Thousands of tons of garbage still disfigure Paris after more than three weeks of garbage collectors’ strike and serve as fuel for groups of thugs in the evening.
“Gesture of appeasement”
While remaining inflexible on the substance of the reform, the government proclaims its desire for “appeasement”.
On Monday, Emmanuel Macron, whose popularity has fallen sharply, brought together Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and the executives of her majority – party leaders, ministers, parliamentarians.
According to comments reported by a participant, the president declared that it was necessary to “continue to reach out” to the unions and accused the party La France insoumise (LFI, radical left) of wanting to “delegitimize” the institutions.
The Prime Minister, who has set herself the objectives of “appease the country” and “accelerate the responses to the expectations of the French”, opened three weeks of consultations on Monday, with parliamentarians, political parties, local elected officials and the social partners, if they so wish.
But the unions, which have warned against an uncontrolled skid of the protest, do not intend to give up on the starting age, the keystone of their mobilization.
The leader of the reformist central CFDT Laurent Berger, who is calling for a “pause” in this reform, asked the executive on Tuesday to set up “mediation” to “find a way out”. “What the intersyndicale is proposing today is a gesture of appeasement,” said Laurent Berger.
The head of the CGT union, Philippe Martinez announced that the inter-union was going to “write to the President of the Republic”, to ask him once again “to suspend his project”, while certain voices of the left opposition, such as the Communist leader Fabien Roussel, accuse Emmanuel Macron of “playing the rot” of the movement.
“We take Laurent Berger’s proposal to talk to each other, but directly. No need for mediation,” retorted the government spokesperson.
Territorial intelligence anticipates that “650,000 to 900,000 people will march everywhere in France on Tuesday, including 70,000 to 100,000 people in Paris”, according to a police source.
Another police source predicts “a doubling or even a tripling” of the presence of young people in the processions, and several schools were blocked on Tuesday morning.
“The goal is to provide support to the strikers and to allow people to go to the demo,” explains Loann, 15, in first at Lavoisier high school in Paris.
A sign of the deleterious climate, particularly violent clashes opposed demonstrators and law enforcement on Saturday in a rural region of central France against a backdrop of hostility to a water reservoir project. Two men were between life and death after the clashes.
Young people are particularly mobilized on the issue of police violence, some of which has been widely shared on social networks, and while the Council of Europe has criticized an “excessive use of force”.