PARIS (AP) — Authorities across France braced Thursday for the possibility of more riots and violence at anti-government protests this weekend, holding emergency meetings and deploying tens of thousands of police and security forces. Museums, theaters and shops in Paris announced they would close Saturday as a precaution — including the city’s famed Eiffel Tower.
Police unions and city authorities met to strategize on how to handle the weekend protests, which are coming even though President Emmanuel Macron surrendered Wednesday night and cancelled a fuel tax hike that had unleashed weeks of unrest.
On the other side of France’s volatile social debate, disparate groups of protesters did the same thing, sharing their weekend plans on social networks and chat groups.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told senators Thursday that the government will deploy “exceptional” security measures for the protests in Paris and elsewhere, with additional new forces on top of the 65,000 security officers already in place.
Some “yellow vest” protesters, French union officials and prominent politicians across the political spectrum called for calm Thursday after the worst rioting in Paris in decades last weekend.
Macron agreed to abandon the fuel tax hike, part of his plans to combat global warming, but protesters’ demands have now expanded to other issues hurting French workers, retirees and students. And in a move questioned by both critics and supporters, the president himself has disappeared from public view.
The prime minister reiterated the government’s plan to scrap a fuel tax rise planned by the previous government because of the “extreme tensions” France is facing.
“No tax deserves to put civil peace in danger,” Philippe said.
The rioting in Paris has worried tourists, prompted the cancellation of four French league soccer matches this weekend around the country and damaged the local economy at the height of the holiday shopping season. Rampaging groups last weekend threw cobblestones through Paris storefronts and looted valuables in some of the city’s richest neighborhoods.
The Eiffel Tower, along with more than a dozen museums, two theaters and other cultural sites in Paris, will be closed Saturday for security reasons. The Paris Opera has cancelled planned performances Saturday on its two Parisian sites.
Two music festivals in Paris have been postponed and the Arc de Triomphe remains closed since it was damaged in last weekend’s protest, which left over 130 people injured.
Paris police have also urged shops in the city’s high-end Champs-Elysees area to close Saturday as a precaution.
Protests simmered Thursday in several French regions.
Scores of protesting teens clashed with police at a high school west of Paris, as part of nationwide student protests over new university admissions procedures and rising administrative fees. Drivers wearing their signature yellow safety vests continued to block roads around France, expanding their demands to include broader tax cuts and wider social benefits.
A small union representing police administrators called for a strike Saturday, which could further complicate security measures. Two police union officials told The Associated Press they are worried that radical troublemakers from both the far right and far left will hijack Saturday’s protests.
Meanwhile, videos on social media of police beating protesters at a Burger King near the Champs-Elysees have stoked the protesters’ anger. A police spokeswoman said Thursday that an investigation is underway into that incident and police are examining other videos circulating online for possible violations.
Macron, the central target of the protests, has been largely invisible all week. After winning election overwhelmingly last year, the 40-year-old pro-business centrist has sought to make France more competitive globally. But his efforts have alienated even some supporters with badly explained reforms like tax cuts for the rich to spur investment in France. Many protesters feel Macron has an elitist, out-of-touch attitude that ignores the country’s high taxes and high unemployment.
They felt the increased fuel tax in particular favored wealthy city folk who use public transportation over poorer rural residents who must drive to work or school or shops.
Macron doesn’t face re-election until 2022 and his party has a strong majority in parliament, but his political opponents are increasingly vocal and plan a no-confidence vote in the government next week.
Clement Rozey, manager of a motorcycle shop in western Paris, spent two days and nights cleaning up after watching helplessly last weekend as thugs smashed his shop windows and emptied his shelves. He has boarded up the store and is among those staying closed on Saturday.
“We’re going to have a security company with security guards inside and outside the shop,” Rozey told the AP. “Everything has been fenced off, several times.”
Yet he remains sympathetic to the protest movement.
“Just like everybody, we’re strangled (financially) after the 15th of the month,” he said, referring to the day when many French workers are paid. The protesters “are defending a cause, they’re following through and rightly so. We support them whole-heartedly.”
But violent troublemakers who pillage and riot?
“That’s something else,” Rozey said.
Sacre bleu!
When I am in Paris, I make it a point to view the memorial plaques that are placed on walls all over the city. Many–most of the ones I see–reflect people who died in the Resistance to the Nazis, particularly the rising as the Allied armies approached in August 1945. I have often tried to picture what the beautiful city was like during that battle. Something like what it is becoming now, I fear (although I trust that this will be much less deadly).
So what’s behind this? “Centrist” policies that favor the wealthy and don’t address inequality, years of exclusionary and racist policies against immigrants, Russian medaling? All of the above. I’m not all that knowledgable, but living in the US this seems familiar.
Familiar but yet not quite, as the social safety net is better in France and policies favor the rich even more here. And i don’t think those protesting are pro immigrants. Labor laws do seem a bit messed up there, and they get to retire pretty young, easier to live off min wage there compare to here. They seem to love rioting over anything though.
I’m sorry, I just can’t let this comment go unopposed…
Although the French have always been very outspoken and passionate in their protests, it is absolutely incorrect to say “they… love rioting over anything”. That’s just pure, hyperbolic nonsense.
Unless you are ready and willing to say the same of Americans? Do we love rioting over anything else? Or do those riots occur in the face of extreme injustices, such as the Watts riots, or the violence surrounding the Vietnam War protests? Most of that violence was initiated by the authorities, as apparently were many of the incidents in Paris recently.
Or perhaps even the recent push back against extreme white supremacy and neo-nazis that devolved into violent conflict and “riots” in our own city streets?
Come on. Riots happen everywhere. Throughout history. Mostly in response to extremes of injustice. Macron is too strongly on the side of corporatism and the greed that goes with it. Thus, anger that spills over into violence. And it’s only barely less so here in the US.
Address the injustices that the protests are about, perhaps? Instead of ridiculously asserting that Parisians prefer rioting to anything else…
It’s complicated–what a surprise. The French do have a good safety net, but they pay very high taxes for it. The current protests seem to have the strongest support among people outside the cities, or on the fringes of them, who do not have the services that urban dwellers enjoy, but still pay high taxes. The proposed rise in fuel prices–said to be intended to further the struggle against climate change–was the tipping point. Many of the protesters, at least the early ones, are people who have to use their cars to get to markets, doctors, etc., like many Americans, but were just getting by. For them, clamping down on cars is a real threat. There are also people who are threatened by Macron’s labor reforms, even though those may well be necessary to alleviate sclerosis in the French economy (although Krugman, among others, argues that the French are more productive than they are painted). And there is anti-immigrant sentiment, too, although that has not been so apparent to date.
Also, as a professor of mine noted many decades ago, in France 30-40% of the people at any one time are not just against the government, but against the constitution.