Around 2,500 demonstrators gathered at Place de la Concorde in Paris on Friday night, as they did the day before, to protest pension reform and the application of Article 49.3 after several school and university students attended during the day.
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According to AFP journalists, the crowd swelled around 7 p.m. in an atmosphere that had been rather quiet until then.
Clara, 22, attended all the demonstrations. “It’s important to be there, I’m afraid the movement is running out of steam,” the student, who declined to give her last name, told AFP.
A little earlier, around 200 people, mostly young people, had gathered outside the police station in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, where two students arrested in the morning near Tolbiac were taken into police custody.
Across France, around fifteen university sites were closed on Friday (Nanterre, Cassin center in Paris 1 or Mulhouse) and around twenty others were occupied (Bordeaux Montaigne, Lyon 2, etc.), according to the student union L’Alternative who spearheaded this movement.
In Paris, students gathered at the end of the morning in front of the Tolbiac site of the University of Paris 1, which was administratively closed as a precaution, along with others who had found themselves in the Place de la Sorbonne.
The students (they say they number between 150 and 400) tried to organize an impromptu demonstration to support garbage collectors who were striking at the Ivry-sur-Seine incinerator, but the movement was quickly crushed by police, they said. written down.
Some high schools were also closed on Friday, such as the Turgot and Henri IV high schools in Paris.
“The principle of 49.3 is really undemocratic,” declared Raphaëlle, 16, in Henri IV’s first grade, adding that “it is symbolic to do this blockade here today because it was Macron’s high school.” .
“We managed to mobilize all the students. That really shows that there is a consensus,” added Nina, 16, also a first at this high school.
On Thursday, more than 1,600 young people marched from the Sorbonne before joining other protesters at Place de la Concorde, not far from the National Assembly, where Elisabeth Borne triggered Article 49.3.