Macron Government Wants Crackdown on Violent Protesters

(Bloomberg News/TNS) — French President Emmanuel Macron’s government called for a crackdown on violent protesters as labor unions vowed to pursue their campaign against his pension reforms with a fourteenth day of demonstrations.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said a total of 540 people were detained in the country Monday, as street clashes marred marches against pension reform which saw the biggest Labor Day turnout in more than two decades. The holiday, typically dedicated to marches for workers’ rights, saw 305 people detained in Paris, and 406 police officers wounded, most of them in the capital.

“This violence must come to an end,” Darmanin told BFM TV on Tuesday. He called for the introduction of a law that would ban anyone deemed by authorities as posing a threat to public order from taking part in a demonstration.

That provision was struck down by the Constitutional Council four years ago during the Yellow Vests protest, when a tax on fuel sparked a wider movement for social justice. Other measures were upheld, including allowing police to search baggage and cars before a demonstration, and a ban on people covering their faces during a protest.

Labor unions called for another day of protests and strikes on June 6.

Macron has regularly faced violence on the streets since his first mandate, including against his first attempt to reform pensions in 2019 and 2020. He scrapped it citing the Covid pandemic, before proposing another plan last year.

The new changes, which raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, will enter into force by the end of the year and have triggered demonstrations and strikes since mid-January.

According to the interior ministry, 782,000 people marched Monday. While this is below the turnout at the start of the movement, it’s a record for Labor Day since 2002, when the scare of presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen drew people out to oppose his far-right ideology. Fast forward 20 years, and his daughter Marine Le Pen represents the strongest opposition party in the National Assembly, where Macron lost his absolute majority in June. Meanwhile, Macron’s popularity has dwindled.

Symbols of corporate power, such as the Louis Vuitton Foundation on the outskirts of Paris, were defaced Monday. In Paris, one police officer suffered serious injuries after being burned by a Molotov cocktail and activists spilled buckets of orange paint in front of the Justice Ministry.

“Each time it’s the same thing: it’s always the ultra-left,” Darmanin said. He has previously slammed what he called “black bourges,” referring to a violent movement known as “Black Blocs” and bourgeois “kids from good families” joining their ranks. “We have to prevent vandals from going to protests,” he said Tuesday.

Human rights NGOs like Amnesty International have accused the government of excessive use of force and abusive arrests.

On Wednesday, the Constitutional Council will rule whether a proposal to hold a referendum to scrap Macron’s plans can go through. The proposal was put forward by opposition lawmakers, but union representatives said they don’t believe the Council will give its green light after it rejected a first proposal for a referendum last month.

Macron says raising the pension age is vital to boost employment rates and halt the build-up of deficits in the massive public retirement system as the population ages. Unions say changing the age thresholds to claim a full pension will damage the least well-off and that there are other options to balance the system, including higher taxes on business and the wealthy.