Bordeaux City Hall was set on fire as protests against President Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age continued across France on Thursday.
Rail and air links were disrupted on the ninth day of nationwide unrest as more than a million people took to the streets, including 119,000 in the capital Paris.
The footage shows the front door of Bordeaux City Hall on fire, although firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze.
In central Paris, where the protesters were generally peaceful, small groups of Black Bloc anarchists smashed shop windows, destroyed street furniture and ransacked a McDonald’s restaurant.
Clashes erupted when riot police arrived and used tear gas and stun grenades to push back the anarchists. The BFM TV channel, citing the police, reported that 26 people had been detained.
“I came here because I’m against this reform and I’m really against democracy, which doesn’t mean anything anymore,” said Sophie Mendy, an administrative doctor. Reuters during a rally in Paris. “We are unrepresented and therefore we are fed up.”
Unions fear the protests could escalate into violence if the government fails to deal with growing popular anger over pension cuts.
Workers went on strike at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris.
Police fired tear gas at some protesters in several other cities, including Nantes and Bordeaux in the west, and fired water cannons at others in Rennes in the northwest.
The newspaper Ouest-France reported that in the western city of Lorient, shells caused a brief fire in the garden of a police station.
“There is a lot of anger, an explosive situation,” Philippe Martinez, leader of the hardline CBT union, said at the start of the meeting in Paris. Union leaders called for calm but were outraged by Macron’s “provocative” comments.
On Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron broke weeks of silence by saying he would stand firm and introduce a pension law by the end of the year, comparing the protests to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Opinion polls have long shown that a majority of voters oppose the pension law.
They were also outraged that last week the government used special powers to introduce pension changes without a vote in parliament.
Slogans and banners were aimed at President Macron, who dodged reporters as he arrived in Brussels for a summit of European Union leaders.
France’s interior ministry said 1.09 million people protested across the country, while the CGT union said 3.5 million people demonstrated, in line with an earlier peak on March 7.
It seems increasingly likely that the protests will derail the first state visit of King Charles’s government.
Union officials responsible for ceremonial regalia such as red carpets said their members would not prepare a reception for the king and queen consort when they arrived on Sunday.
According to reports, a lavish banquet at the Palace of Versailles hosted by President Macron could be postponed or even cancelled.
It is understood that the logistics of the trip have been under review for several days, but security concerns could reduce interaction with the public and reduce the impact of the visit, which aims to strengthen ties between the UK and its continental neighbor.
The trip, which will be followed by a state visit to Germany, has been planned for months by the UK and the host countries, and the timing is coincidental as it comes weeks after the UK’s relationship with Brussels has weakened. new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland.
Additional coverage from Reuters
Source: I News
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.