French police clashed with black-clad anarchists in Paris and other big cities during trade union-organised protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s increase in the retirement age, as workers joined Labour Day rallies across Europe.
In the French capital, police were pelted with projectiles, ride-sharing bicycles were torched and bus stops smashed up just as the union-led march got underway from the central Place de la Republique.
Unrest also erupted in Lyon, where several vehicles were set ablaze and some business premises were trashed, television images showed. In Nantes in western France, a fire blazed in front of a local administration building.
Macron last month raised the retirement age by two years to 64 despite multi-sector strikes, in a move that drove his popularity down to near the record lows seen during the “Yellow Vest” crisis of 2018-2019.
The reform has crystallised discontent against a President perceived by many as aloof and indifferent to their daily hardships, and he has been met during walkabouts by heckling and pot-banging.
“The executive cannot govern without the support of its people,” Sophie Binet, leader of the hard-left CGT union, said ahead of the Paris protest, adding her union had not yet decided on talks with the government on other work-related matters.
Laurent Berger, head of the reform-minded CFDT trade union, said Macron’s government had been deaf to the demands of one of the most powerful social movements in decades.
He dismissed suggestions that a rare alliance between the leading trade unions was being tested now that the pension bill had been signed into law. “We must bring other proposals over salaries and working conditions to the table,” he told BFM TV.
In Paris, Extinction Rebellion activists threw paint over the glass-fronted facade of the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
Elsewhere in Europe, union-led protests were planned across Germany. In Italy, the three main unions held a rally in Potenza protesting against a labour package approved by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Rightist government.
