France saw its largest protest so far against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform on Thursday, with more than a million people taking to the streets across the country. The gatherings started peacefully, but were marred by violence in Paris and several other cities, as police used batons, tear gas and water cannons to disperse rioters, who hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, set up barricades, and vandalised public property. The French Interior Ministry said 1.089 million people took part in the ninth nationwide rally against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. According to official data, attendance doubled compared to March 15, the previous day of protests. The CGT confederation of trade unions claimed that the number of demonstrators on Thursday was far higher, totalling 3.5 million.
Violence and arrests Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday morning that 457 people were arrested across the country, most of them in Paris, where 903 fires were lit on the streets. The scuffles saw 441 police officers injured, he said. There were reportedly dozens of wounded among the demonstrators, including a woman, who lost a thumb in the town of Rouen in Normandy. In his comments late on Thursday, Darmanin said the damage caused by the riots was more significant than on previous days. He singled out incidents in Bordeaux, where the entrance to the city hall was set on fire, and Lorient, where a police station was targeted. The minister blamed the chaos on some 1,500 “thugs, often from the far left, who want to bring down the state and kill police officers.” Those people are already known to law enforcement, he added. However, the deputy secretary general of the CFDT union, Marylise Leon, insisted that the “responsibility for this explosive situation lies not with the unions, but with the government.” The unrest is a result of “the falsehoods expressed by the president and his incomprehensible stubbornness,” she said. When is the next protest? The unions have called for the next – tenth – day of nationwide strikes and rallies against the pension reform to be held on Tuesday, March 28. The development could potentially distrupt a planned visit by Britain’s King Charles III, who is scheduled to travel to Bordeaux by train on that day. Speaking about future protests, which have been building momentum since January, Leon claimed that “the powerful social rejection of this project is legitimate and its expression must continue.” Pension reform Thursday’s huge turnout follows a decision by Macron’s government earlier this week to use executive privilege to pass the pension reform bill without a parliamentary vote. Despite fervent opposition and calls to resign, the president is insisting on raising the retirement age to 64 by the end of the year. He argues that failure to do so will cause the entire French pension system to collapse. Macron, whose ratings have slumped to below 30% since the onset of the crisis, said on Wednesday that he would always choose the future of the nation over short-term opinion polls, pledging: “If it is necessary to accept unpopularity today, I will accept it.” However, trade unions insist that the reform is “unfair” and mainly harms low-skilled workers with physically draining jobs and women with interrupted careers. One of attendees at Thursday’s rally claimed Macron’s plan was “a death sentence” for him.
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Soccer teams representing seven European nations at the World Cup have announced their captains will no longer wear the OneLove armband in Qatar after FIFA, which organizes the tournament, said players sporting the bands would be sanctioned. The captains of England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, had originally intended to wear the rainbow armband to promote diversity and inclusion at the World Cup.
“We were prepared to pay fines that would normally apply to breaches of kit regulations and had a strong commitment to wearing the armband. However, we cannot put our players in the situation where they might be booked or even forced to leave the field of play,” the soccer associations said in a joint statement. Three of the teams, England, Wales and the Netherlands, were due to play Monday. “We are very frustrated by the FIFA decision which we believe is unprecedented,” the teams added, vowing to show their support for “inclusion” in other ways. “As national federations, we can’t put our players in a position where they could face sporting sanctions including bookings.” Qatar has come under scrutiny in the lead-up to the tournament over its approach to human rights, including concerns over the conditions of migrant workers and the conservative Persian Gulf state’s stance on LGBT people. Sex between men is prohibited in Qatar and punishable by up to seven years in prison, according to a recent U.S. State Department report. Six of the 12 nuclear reactors in France that were found to have corrosion issues in May have been repaired and will be restarted soon, French Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has revealed. She told France Inter radio on Wednesday that, at the moment, there was “no reason” to believe that energy operator EDF would not be able to meet the schedule for restarting all shutdown reactors before winter.
Earlier, media reports stated that EDF had hired about 100 American welders from Westinghouse in order to repair the power units on time. France generates roughly 70% of its electricity from a nuclear fleet of 56 reactors, all operated by EDF. However, many of them have been closed down for maintenance, some due to corrosion-related issues. Currently, only 31 units are reportedly operating. EDF has pledged to restart all shutdown reactors before winter to avoid power shortages in the country. However, since October 6, there have been strikes among EDF employees involved in repair work at 19 reactors, delaying maintenance by several weeks. Last month, the French national electricity grid operator RTE warned that it would not rule out the risk of blackouts this winter due to prolonged strikes halting the repair. According to RTE, outages could only be avoided if power consumption was reduced by 1% to 5%, while in the event of an extremely cold winter – by 15%. Failure to restart the plants on time could have “heavy consequences” for power supply over the winter period, the operator has warned.
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The European Union came into being to maintain the neoliberal project. It hoped to create a neutral politics in Europe – a politics beyond left and right, beyond socialism and conservatism – that would allow the states to function no matter what. The EU wants the continent to be governed by parties firmly in the political centre, or by big coalitions. But many Europeans, even progressive people like myself, are a little bit tired of this constant search for “the big centre”. Moderate governments, parties and coalitions in the centre are not taking into consideration the real needs of the people while forming their policies. Most European citizens want clear, direct policies that can solve their economic problems. All this is creating an opportunity for the rise of extremists who can communicate a very clear political message. At the moment, the far right is taking advantage of this, but the far left is not. It's too important that Europe should confront the growing far right movement with left wing populism.
Tipping the right wing over The emergence of another far-right candidate on France’s political scene – Eric Zemmour, with his provocative and disruptive campaign – has boosted Le Pen’s new standing as a “practical” politician. Convicted of hate speech and known for his vitriol against immigrants and Islam, Zemmour leads a party – Reconquete or “Reconquest” – that is named after the historic period known as “Reconquista” when Christian forces drove Muslim rulers out from the Iberian peninsula. Zemmour has succeeded in not only winning some of Le Pen’s voter base over to his own party. He has also taken supporters from the mainstream centre-right that had traditionally been with the party Les Republicains. Thanks to Zemmour, Le Pen appears to be much more moderate. People now equate far right with just Zemmour, which is a big mistake as Le Pen is without a doubt still from the far right. For Jean-Yves Camus, a journalist and political analyst, the merging of the right wing into the far right is one of the biggest developments of the election. Zemmour hosting a rally last month at the Trocadero square – a symbolic place for Les Republicains – was no coincidence, Camus explained. His call to important figures from Les Republicains such as Eric Ciotti, Nadine Morano, and François Xavier Bellamy is a discreet invitation to join his campaign. If Zemmour continues to poll higher than Les Republicains candidate Valerie Pecresse, he will be in a position of strength to negotiate his main goal – the reconfiguration of France’s right-wing parties, More common ground than divisions Le Pen and Zemmour’s combined poll ratings – 24 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively – amount to an unprecedented more than 30 percent for the far right in France. The main elements behind the far-right surge to “pessimistic” and “declinist” attitudes in France. French people feel like their country has changed and lost its power. Moreover the November 2015 attacks on French soil by the ISIL (ISIS) group had played a large part in such feelings. Part of the population believe in the war against Islam, and view the Muslim community here as the enemy from within. Zemmour has capitalised on such sentiments, and he shares the view that Muslims in France are not able to culturally assimilate. The RN party – known up until 2018 as the National Front (FN) – has been around for some 40 years, and its views have spread from a fringe movement to mainstream French society. The far right are also more united than the various left parties. The French government defended President Emmanuel Macron, Wednesday, for his use of coarse language in a stepped-up campaign against France's unvaccinated, after his words drew condemnation from the opposition and mixed reactions from voters. Macron said he wanted to "piss off" unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting jabbed. He was speaking in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper in which he also called unvaccinated people irresponsible and unworthy of being considered citizens.
"A president cannot say such things," Christian Jacob, chair of the conservative Les Republicans party, told parliament as it discussed a bill to make it mandatory for people to show proof of vaccination to enter many enclosed public spaces. But spokesman Gabriel Attal said that, amid a "supersonic" rise in COVID cases, the government stood by Macron's comments. "Who is pissing off who today?" Attal said, quoting health workers struggling to cope or businesses hurt by the pandemic. "It's those who refuse the vaccine." People who got the jab are "exasperated" with the unvaccinated, Prime Minister Jean Castex said. With a presidential election due in April in which he is expected to run, Macron may have calculated that enough people are now vaccinated ― and upset with remaining anti-vaxxers ― for his comment to go down well with voters. In a country where more than 124,000 people have died of COVID-19, his words resonated with some. "He's right," said 89-year-old Paris pensioner Jean, who has had his COVID-19 booster and a flu shot too. "Those who are against the vaccine should understand the dangers, and they should get vaccinated." But others agreed with lawmaker Jacob that Macron's use of the slang term "emmerder" ― from "merde" (shit) ― was unacceptable. "That shows an aggressive side, it's a bad word, it's not very clever of him," said 25-year old sales representative Maya Belhassen. "That's not a good comment from a president," added newspaper seller Pascal Delord. Targeting the sceptics France has historically had more vaccine sceptics than many of its neighbors, and pandemic restrictions have triggered many street protests, but nearly 90 percent of those aged 12 and above have now been inoculated, one of the continent's highest COVID-19 vaccination rates. People have for several months had to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to enter venues such as cinemas and cafes and use trains. But with Delta and Omicron variant infections surging, the government decided to drop the test option in the new bill. The opposition forced several suspensions of the parliamentary debate on the vaccine pass after the interview was published late Tuesday. "I'm in favor of the vaccine pass but I cannot back a text whose objective is to 'piss off' the French," Jacob told parliament. "Is that your objective, yes or no?" A government source said they were not worried about the adoption of the text, despite the heated parliamentary debate, which resumed Wednesday afternoon, and after hundreds of amendments. The initial plan was for the new legislation to enter into force Jan.15. One day or two of delay would not change much, the source said. After the lower house of parliament eventually votes on it, the bill will go the senate for approval. |
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