FRANCE: Groups of defiant “yellow vest” demonstrators faced off with tens of thousands of police around France on Saturday, but the protest movement appeared to have lost momentum on a fifth and decisive weekend.
President Emmanuel Macron, facing the biggest crisis of his presidency, announced a series of concessions on Monday to defuse the explosive “yellow vest” crisis, which swelled up from rural and small-town France last month.
The package of tax and minimum wage measures for low-income workers, coupled with bitter winter weather this weekend, appeared to have helped bring calm to the country after more than a month of clashes and disruption.
France was also hit by a fresh deadly terror attack on Tuesday night when a gunman opened fire at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, leaving four dead and leading the government to urge people to stay at home to spare the stretched security forces.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said Saturday that eight people had now died in incidents linked to the demonstrations, and called on protesters to halt their blockades across the country.
“Everyone’s safety has to become the rule again,” he said in a tweet.
“Dialogue now needs to unite all those who want to transform France.” Richard Ferrand, the head of the National Assembly, welcomed the “necessary” weakening of the rallies, adding that “there had been a massive response to their demands”.
An estimated 66,000 people took to the streets across France, according to figures from the interior ministry early Saturday evening, half the level of a week ago.
But Macron’s approval rating has also fallen: dropping to 23 percent according to a poll published by Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday, down two points from November. It marks a sharp decline from his 62 percent rating following his election in May last year. In Paris, the more than 8,000 police on duty easily outnumbered the 2,200 protesters counted by local authorities in the early afternoon.
There were 168 arrests by early evening, far down on the roughly 1,000 of last Saturday. Tear gas was occasionally fired, but a fraction of the amount was used compared with the weekends of December 8 or December 1 when graffiti was daubed on the Arc de Triomphe in scenes that shocked France.
Minor clashes were reported in southwestern Bordeaux where teargas was used and projectiles thrown. It was a similar picture in Toulouse, Nantes, Besancon, Nancy, Saint-Etienne and Lyon.
Protesters snarled traffic on motorways in the south of the country and on the A16 near the port of Calais in the north.
Until this week, a clear majority of French people had backed the protests, which sprung up initially over high taxes before snowballing into a wider opposition to Macron’s pro-business agenda and style of governing.
But two polls published on Tuesday -- in the wake of Macron’s concessions -- suggested the country was now broadly 50-50 on whether the protests should continue.
In a bid to end the standoff, a visibly contrite Macron announced a package of measures on Monday in a televised address, estimated by economists to cost up to 15 billion euros ($17 billion). More than 1,400 people have been injured since the protests began on November 17.
Around 69,000 security forces were mobilised across France, down from 89,000 last Saturday when 2,000 people were detained. - AFP
French riot Police disperse demonstrators with tear gas during a demonstrations in Paris today as
clashes between protesters and officers broke out across the country.
