Macron warned he faces same fate as Louis XVI as pension protests engulf France
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country, clashing with police, disrupting travel and blockading oil refineries in the most chaotic day of unrest since demonstrations against the president’s plan to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64 began earlier this year.
Thursday’s nationwide strikes were the first since the government survived a no-confidence motion and pushed the deeply unpopular reform through parliament without a vote.
French unions claimed 3.5 million people had taken part in the demonstrations, while police said just over one million had done so.
Large crowds marched in Paris, where protesters carried placards depicting Mr Macron in the regalia of France’s executed leader, with messages warning: “Louis XVI – we beheaded him.”
Protesters stormed the city’s Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, blocking the motorway leading to it and forcing travellers to reach it on foot.
Crowds of demonstrators blocked the tracks at Gare de Lyon train station, with the union member leading them calling for the president to be “overthrown” and for King Charles’ visit to Paris this weekend to be targeted. “Let’s all go to Versailles and welcome him as we should,” Fabien Villedieu told BFMTV.
French trade unions have called for a new day of nationwide strikes and protests next Tuesday to coincide with the visit.
Elsewhere in the capital, the Eiffel Tower, Palace of Versailles and Arc de Triomphe were closed.
While most demonstrators in Paris were generally peaceful, smaller groups of “Black Bloc” anarchists smashed shop windows, destroyed street furniture and ransacked a McDonald’s restaurant.
Clashes broke out as riot police moved in and drove back the protesters with tear gas and stun grenades, and firefighters were forced to intervene after pallets and piles of uncollected rubbish were set ablaze.
Nadia Belhoum, a 48-year-old bus driver taking part in the Paris march, criticised Mr Macron’s decision to force the higher retirement age through, saying: “The president of the Republic… is not a king, and he should listen to his people.”
The president broke weeks of silence on the new policy to say he would stand firm and that the law would come into force by the end of the year, at one point comparing the protests to the 2021 storming of the US Capitol.
Critics attacked the statement, calling him “self-satisfied” and “out of touch”. Ahead of the demonstrations in Paris, Philippe Martinez, the head of the CGT union, accused Mr Macron of stoking the flames.
“When there is such a conflict, the role of the president of the republic is to calm things down. Yesterday, he threw a can of gasoline on the fire,” he said.
