Mayhem broke out at labour union organised protests in Paris against the cost of living crisis befalling the French public this week, with black bloc-clad rioters clashing with police and smashing windows.
An estimated 107,000 people took to the streets of France on Tuesday in protest against the growing economic crisis born out the energy crisis surrounding the war in Ukraine, and self-inflicted economic wounds such as years of lockdown restrictions which spurred rampant inflation, and failures by the government to perform maintenance on the country’s ageing nuclear power plants.
The protests, which were organised by the CGT trade union, which boasts some 690,000 workers among its ranks, were called in order to demand higher wages for public sector employees, such as transport workers and teachers. According to the union, approximately 70,000 people attended the march in Paris, however, the Ministry of Interior claimed that around 13,000 joined the protest, Le Parisien reported.
Video footage posted online by the AFP News Agency and street reporter Clement Lenot showed members of the group clashing with police as well as vandalising and breaking windows at a BMW store in Paris.
According to a police source cited by Le Parisien around 200 far-left agitators infiltrated the demonstration with the intention of fighting. In total, there were 15 arrests throughout the country, 11 of which took place in Paris. Nine police officers suffered injuries during the fighting, eight of whom were policing the Paris protest.
CGT’s secretary general Philippe Martinez said: “Our demands are more than ever on the agenda, the question of salaries. We see that this is the number one priority of the French.”
“Inflation affects all workers in Europe,” Martinez continued. “We can see that the profits of big companies are exploding and that employees are being told their pay cannot be increased, that there is no money. So this anger is widespread in Europe”.
The union-led action comes amid wider strikes wreaking havoc upon the French economy, with a strike from the union representing gas refinery and depot workers resulting in mass shortages at gas stations throughout the country leaving drivers frustrated amid long lines at the pump.
This week, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne tried to put a positive spin on the situation, claiming to have made a “significant improvement” by reducing the number of stations without fuel from one third earlier this month to around one quarter now.
“Thanks to the exit from the conflict at Esson-Exxon Mobil, thanks to all the measures we have taken, we are now experiencing a significant improvement in the situation,” she said at a meeting of the National Assembly.
Strikes are also further threatening French energy security heading into what is expected to be a difficult and cold winter throughout Europe, with strikes among nuclear power plant workers affecting nearly one third of the nation’s reactors. The strikes come at a critical time, given that nuclear energy production has been driven down to a thirty year low amid outages caused by corrosion issues and maintenance requirements.
FNME-CGT union representative Virginie Neumayer told Reuters on Tuesday that 20 out of 56 reactors have been impacted by strikes, 17 of which have had their maintenance delayed as a result. According to the French power grid operator RTE, continued strikes could come with “heavy consequences” for the supply of energy during the winter months.
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