Protests against fuel prices and reforms – riots and tear gas in Paris
Water cannons, smoke bombs, tear gas, burning cars, armchairs, garbage cans. The Champs-Elysées resembled a battlefield. Policemen in combat suits, masked men in safety vests, some with gas masks, some with flares. Others hammered cobblestones out of the ground with hammering and destroyed public facilities.
Off the cameras it looked different. It was supposed to have been 80,000 people – less than in the previous week – that hit the streets across France on Saturday to protest against the rise in fuel prices and President Emmanuel Macron’s policy of reform. Most wore yellow warning vests, signs, whistles – and all their anger in the stomach. They are fed up with the policies of Liberal President Emmanuel Macron. Most of the proverbs and songs of the demonstrators demand the resignation of the president.
“We are pacifists – and get tear gas,” says a woman on French television.” Macron does not understand anything.” He did not even know a correct answer to the protests.
The trigger for the demonstrations was the increase in taxes on fuel – since the beginning of the year prices for diesel went up to 23 and for gasoline by 15 percent. But the criticism goes much further. The central point that has been consolidated since the protests in the minds: Macron make “politics for the rich”, while the others remain on the track.
Mr. Macron is to resign. Otherwise: Revolution, is on a poster that holds an elderly gentleman
in Lyon in his hands.
Macron himself clearly struggles to respond appropriately to the protests. At first he had spoken of regressive Gauls, later he wanted to respect them more. Finally, he complained that he was blamed for everything: “It’s almost as if they would see my face while refueling.”
