The new day of mobilization in France, the tenth, which involved hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country to protest against the pension reform wanted by the government, also goes into the archive.
The membership numbers fluctuate between 740 thousand protesters registered by the Ministry of the Interior, and over 2 million reported by the CGT union. However, this figure is down from last Thursday's mobilization in which the unions had 3.5 million participants. But today will not be the last day of protests, a new mobilization has already been announced for April 6.
Already in the morning the expected demonstrations had reignited fears of new violence, so much so as to push the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, to deploy 13 thousand agents, of which almost half in Paris alone, a record since the beginning of the mobilizations.
Just in the capital, after a peaceful procession that crossed the city from Place de la Republique to Place de la Nation, some bins were set on fire in Boulevard Voltaire, while a group of mobs attacked and looted the Leclerc warehouses. Police intervened and arrested at least 27 people. There are also 2 injured.
Tensions were also registered in Nantes, where protesters threw objects at police who responded with tear gas. A bank branch and bins in front of the court were set on fire. In Rennes, where about 22,<> people gathered, an insurance agency was looted.
The wave of protests was also marked by a general strike, which involved civil servants. Dozens of railway workers invaded and blocked the train tracks of Gare de Lyon in Paris in Paris. While even the country's most famous attraction, the Eiffel Tower, closed to visitors, as the Louvre Museum had done just the day before. But access to the Arc de Triomphe and the Palace of Versailles have also been blocked.
Reuters
Paris. Occupation of tracks at Gare de Lyon
Instead, from Wednesday the garbage collectors who have not cleaned the streets of the city since March 6 will return to work in the capital and the incinerators will resume operation. But despite new calls from trade unions for the government to suspend its hotly contested reform of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, Macron has not made any comment and appears to have remained faithful to his decision.
However, a faint glimmer opens in the story, at the end of the tenth day of mobilization. The general secretary of the CFDT union, Laurent Berger, announced that Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had invited the unions "next Monday or Tuesday".
And if the prime minister herself emphasizes that the invitation to the unions does not mean backtracking on pensions, despite a drop in attendance on this tenth day of mobilization in France compared to Thursday, March 23, the French unions have called for a new day of action on April 6. A predictable response given that the conflict over pension reform seems to be at a standstill.
The next deadline is that of the Constitutional Council, which must issue its verdict on the new reform by April 21. During this period, the unions have warned that they do not intend to ease the pressure on the executive. A position justified "by the demands of the activists themselves and the French, who remain mobilized and opposed to the reform", underlined the CFDT, one of the main unions in the country.