PARIS – Protesters encountered tear gas in Paris and elsewhere in France on Wednesday, with pressure from Emmanuel Macron trying to baptize his new prime minister.
The government’s interior ministry announced 250 arrests in the first few hours of national demonstrations against Macron, budget cuts and other complaints.
Despite no self-claimed intention to claim to be “stop everything,” the protest movement that began online in the summer led to a universal point of destruction that ignored the special deployment of 80,000 police officers who violated the barricades and quickly arrested them.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said a bus caught fire in the western city of Rennes. In the southwest, cable-to-cable fire damage stopped train services on one line and destroyed traffic on the other line.
So far, the protests seem to be more turbulent than before, who occasionally shocked Macron during his first and ongoing second term as president. These include the so-called yellow vest demonstrations in 2018-2019 in the country.
Macron faces angry outrage over unpopular pension reforms and national unrest and riots, causing a teenage shooting in the Paris suburbs of deadly police officers.
Nevertheless, demonstrations and sporadic clashes with Paris’s riot police, adding to the crisis after Wednesday’s latest government collapse, when French Prime Minister François Bayrou lost his parliamentary confidence to vote.
Macron was installing new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on Tuesday, and the protests immediately challenged him.
A group of protesters repeatedly tried to block the Paris ring road during rush hour in the morning and were dispersed by police and tear gas. Elsewhere in the capital, protesters piled up trash cans and threw items at police. Paris police reported 159 people were arrested in the morning.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, about 100 people were detained by police elsewhere in France. Roadblocks, slowing traffic and other protests were widely spread – from the port city of Marseille to the south to Lille and Kane in the north, and Nantes and Reins in the west to Grenoble and Lyon in the southeast.
Due to the long-term unstable cycle of France, the minority government installed by Macron has tilted from crisis to crisis, and the movement has also received support from people without protest.
“There’s a lot of tired, exhausted, frustrated things don’t move forward,” said Lila, a Paris office worker. “This explains to some extent these lockdowns and this general dissatisfaction.”
Some criticized the interruptions.
“It’s a little too much,” Bertrand Rivard, an accountant, said on the way to the meeting in Paris. “We live in a democratic country and people should not stop the country because the government has not made the right decision.”
The “Bloquons Tout” or “Stop Everything” campaign has gathered momentum in the summer on social media and crypto chats. It calls for a day of lockdown, strikes, boycotts, demonstrations and other protests as Bayrou is preparing plans to cut public spending dramatically to reduce 44 billion euros ($51 billion) to curb France’s growing deficit and trillions of dollars in debt. He also proposed to cancel two public holidays from the country’s annual calendar – which turned out to be unpopular.
The new Prime Minister Lecornu, who had served as defense minister, now inherited the task of addressing France’s budget difficulties, facing political unrest and widespread hostility towards Macron, which led to the revocation of Bayrou.
Since Macron disbanded the National Assembly last year, his administration has been on the remote ground, triggering an unplanned legislative election that stacked the lower house of parliament along with opponents of the French president.
“Stop Everything” grows popularly online, without clear leadership and widespread complaints – many targeting budgets, broader inequality and Macron himself.
Retailleau, a conservative, allied with Macron’s centrist camp, served as home secretary for the Beiru government, now in a caretaker until Lecornu brought his cabinet together and accused left-wing activists of hijacking the protest movement, even if it had obvious supporters. Nonviolent calls accompanies its online protest calls.
Retailleau claims that politicians supporting the movement are working to “establish an atmosphere of uprising in France”, and he said some protesters seem to be frustrated while fighting police.
“In fact, we have experienced groups that often wear black masks and hoods, and in fact, it’s a recognized sign of the extreme left and ultra left action, DNA,” Retailleau said.
The spontaneity of “stop everything” is reminiscent of a yellow vest. The movement began with workers camping in traffic circles in protest of fuel taxes, hiking with high visibility vests. It spread rapidly to political, regional, social and generational anger at economic injustice and Macron’s leadership.
