Emmanuel Macron will address the French on Wednesday during a television interview, a long-awaited intervention after the adoption of his pension reform in Parliament which did not put an end to the dispute, with demonstrations in many cities, sometimes fraught with strong tensions.
The French president will answer journalists’ questions at 12 p.m. GMT (8 a.m. EDT) on Wednesday in a live interview on TF1 and France 2, the Elysee Palace and the channels announced.
Before that, Emmanuel Macron will consult in all directions throughout the day on Tuesday to reunite his camp and try to bounce back when his second five-year term already appears to be hampered after less than a year.
He was due to receive at 8 a.m. GMT (4 a.m. EDT) Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, on the front line, who narrowly escaped the overthrow of her government the day before, with the rejection by nearly nine votes of a motion of cross-partisan censure. in the National Assembly.
“I am determined to continue to bring about the transformations necessary for our country”, assured Monday evening the Prime Minister, invited to the Elysee with several tenors of the government and the leaders of the relative majority.
Emmanuel Macron must then have lunch with Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher, presidents of the Assembly and the Senate, before an evening meeting with the parliamentarians of the presidential camp.
” The fight goes on “
Thanks to the decried procedure of 49.3, which allows a text to be adopted without a vote unless the government is censured, the reform – which notably provides for the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64 – was officially adopted on Monday.
This parliamentary epilogue, which was played out by a closer vote than expected (with in particular 19 Les Républicains deputies (LR, right) out of 61 contributing their votes to the cross-party censure motion), did not, however, bring down the pressure on the executive. On the contrary.
“The fight continues,” chanted all the leaders of the left-wing coalition NUPES.
Opponents of the reform are counting in particular on appeals to the Constitutional Council, also seized by Élisabeth Borne, and have drawn up a request for a referendum of shared initiative (RIP), the admissibility of which the Elders must examine.
Some also want to continue the fight in the street.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (radical left), called for “popular censorship” which must “express itself” massively, everywhere in all circumstances “. »
“Nothing undermines the determination of the workers”, warned for its part the powerful CGT union, while the general secretary of the CFDT Laurent Berger called for mobilization for the next day of strikes and demonstrations scheduled for Thursday.
Mr. Berger also said he was worried about the “anger” and “violence” that could be expressed as a result of the adoption of a law which had “no majority in the National Assembly”.
Monday evening, overturned and burned trash cans, barricades, throwing projectiles at the police, and smoke bombs marked some of the demonstrations that erupted spontaneously across France after the adoption of the reform.
Requisitions and arrests
287 arrests took place, including 234 in Paris, during these demonstrations which brought together in the capital small mobile groups wandering in the central districts by burning garbage cans, bicycles and various objects, a police source said on Tuesday.
Firefighters intervened 240 times, according to this source.
In Donges, the police intervened overnight from Monday to Tuesday to unblock the oil terminal, occupied for a week by strikers, noted an AFP photographer. A source close to the strikers contacted by AFP before the end of the intervention reported “clashes”.
Tuesday morning, the government announced requisitions of personnel at the Fos-sur-Mer oil depot in the face of the blockage.
Throughout the day on Monday, the anger was illustrated by new rallies, pickets, blocked roads, disrupted transport or even dry gas stations for the first time since the start of the social conflict.