Smaller crowds gathered across France for the tenth nationwide union protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age, while strikes disrupted transport and closed the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.
By late afternoon, the CGT union estimated that 450,000 people had demonstrated in Paris, compared with 800,000 at Thursday’s last union-led demonstration, with declines also reported in Marseille, Rennes and Toulouse. Police figures put the nationwide crowd at 740,000, compared to more than a million last week.
The lower turnout is a spur to Macron’s government, which has rejected attempts by unions to mediate to ease the crisis and has pledged to stand by mid-April to finalize the reform once it has been reviewed by the constitutional court. Unions called another nationwide protest for April 6.
Some protesters were discouraged from taking part in demonstrations, likely due to the chaotic scenes at Thursday’s union-led protests, where more radical activists set 900 fires and clashed with police in Paris alone. Around 457 arrests were made, prompting criticism from the EU’s Chief Human Rights Ombudsman.
Despite around two-thirds of French opposition, Macron has set his reformist credentials and second-term agenda on raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. His government overrode the legislature this month, using clause 49.3 of the constitution to pass the bill without a vote, sparking a wave of public anger.
Crowds last Thursday were the largest since the protests began, and spontaneous late-night protests have erupted in many towns and cities, making it difficult for unions to control the movement.
Lorélia Fréjo, a 23-year-old member of Collectif Le Poing Levé, a Marxist revolutionary student group, said young people have tried to show their dissatisfaction outside of official marches organized by unions, despite police crackdown.
“We are being told by the government that millions of people on the streets are not enough, that it is useless,” she said on the Place de la République, where the march in Paris began on Tuesday. “So we have to radicalize our actions. . . to protest outside of set calendars.”
On Tuesday, some protesters in Paris set fire to uncollected rubbish, and small groups clashed with police in Lyon and Bordeaux, who responded with tear gas. But overall the situation seemed calmer than on Thursday. The Interior Ministry deployed 13,000 police officers nationwide, up from 12,000 last time.
Fréjo said it was scary to see police clash with protesters and make arrests, but she expressed her determination to press on. “The government wants to try to scare us, but we won’t stop.”
Student activists closed nine university campuses in Paris and at least ten in cities including Toulouse and Nice on Tuesday, according to the UNEF union. Outside Tolbiac University in Paris, students piled electric scooters and trash cans to block entrances and pasted anti-pension reform slogans on walls.
Macron has ruled out withdrawing the reform, arguing that it is necessary to ensure the pension system’s viability in an aging population. The law, which requires the approval of the Constitutional Court before it can go into effect, will raise the retirement age by two years and require people to work for 43 years to receive a full pension.
The government is concerned that the presence of young people at demonstrations, coupled with radical activists whom the government describes as “ultra-left”, increases the risk of injury or even death. Two activists were seriously injured in clashes with police during a disjointed protest on Saturday over an agricultural reservoir and remain in critical condition.
Several human rights groups have sounded the alarm about French police tactics. Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said on Friday the conditions surrounding the protests were becoming “worrying” and warned of police using “excessive force” or depriving people of their right to protest.
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Officials at the Élysée Palace have turned to unions to find ways to ease the crisis. But the government has not accepted its proposal to put the reform “on hold” to allow calm to return to the streets.
On Tuesday, Laurent Berger, leader of the moderate CFDT union, proposed the creation of a “mediation process” run by neutral parties.
“We should take a month or two to ask a handful of people to mediate,” he told Radio France Inter, which “would be a gesture to bring calm back”.
However, government spokesman Olivier Véran rejected the idea. “There is no need for an operator when we can speak directly,” he said.