And the current day of united protest actions, and it is already the tenth in a row, is a resounding confirmation of this. Already on Tuesday morning, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Marseille, Nice, Lorient and other French cities. In Paris, the demonstration takes place in the afternoon, and, according to the calculations of the local Ministry of the Interior, at least one hundred thousand demonstrators gathered on the Place de la République. As for the trade unions, organizers of the march in the capital, they give a different figure – several times more.
To prevent the indignation against the reform, adopted against the popular will, from degenerating into violent clashes, as happened last week, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, mobilized 13,000 police and gendarmes. Note that this had not happened since the turbulent era of the “yellow vests”, whose performances had shocked the country five years ago.
The social climate in France is becoming increasingly stormy, which could lead to an outbreak of violence
The Minister admitted that the situation is inflammable not only because anarchists and other ultra-left elements, who love to organize pogroms, constantly enter the ranks of opponents of reform, but also because of the involvement a growing number of young people in the struggle. According to the authorities, the number has increased by “two, even three times” during these weeks. Several organizations of students and high school students have announced their participation in the processions of those who do not agree with the reform. At the same time, young French people are blocking schools and universities, as happened in Paris with the prestigious Colbert high school, the Dauphine universities, Paris-1, and Science Po (“Institute of Political Sciences”).
This development of events is feared above all within the government. As Guy Gru, an expert and connoisseur of social processes, said, these guys are “like toothpaste, you can’t put it back in a tube”, as was already memorable in the spring of 1968, when a student revolt put the powder fire. the whole country on its hind legs.
Moreover, the strike movement does not subside. Air traffic controllers are on strike, which has announced the cancellation of flights to a number of destinations. At the initiative of the unions, the dockers blocked all French ports for 24 hours. A similar picture is emerging around a number of towns, such as Rennes and Nantes in Brittany in the west of the country, where workers are picketing highways and other access routes.
An extremely difficult situation has developed in the energy sector. Most oil refineries have been on strike for at least two weeks, despite authorities resorting to the practice of ‘requisitioning’ – forcing some staff to go to work under threat of fines and jail time up to six months. Since Tuesday, the three largest refineries have been shut down. And that means “fuel hunger” is spreading like an oil slick across the country. At more than a thousand petrol stations there was almost no petrol or diesel left, reminding drivers of a nightmarish autumn last year when they had to spend hours looking for a station where to fill up. The western and southern departments, as well as the metropolitan region of Île-de-France, were in a critical situation. The management of Paris airports reports a depletion of kerosene stocks. Normally the fuel comes from a refinery in Normandy through a pipeline, but now it’s on strike.
In an attempt to find a way out of the socio-political impasse in which the current government found itself because of the reform rejected by the people, Prime Minister Elizabeth Born initiated a series of consultations with parliamentarians, leaders of political parties and representatives of local administrations. And it is only from April 10 that he intends to meet the trade unionists, with whom, in fact, according to them, he should have started. After all, the head of one of the trade union centers – the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (FDCT) – Laurent Berger has already proposed to suspend the law on pensions for six months and sit down at the negotiating table. To date, no response has been received from the Palais de Matignon to this initiative. The Elysée is also silent. There, as Le Figaro wrote on Tuesday, they “still want neither the abolition of the law, nor the resignation of the Cabinet, nor the dissolution of Parliament”.
In the meantime, testifies the leader of the CFCT, “the social climate in the country is becoming more and more stormy, which could lead to an outbreak of violence”.
