‘Yellow vest’ protests lose momentum
Paris: Groups of defiant “yellow vest” demonstrators faced off with tens of thousands of police around France but the protest movement appeared to have lost momentum on a fifth and decisive weekend.
President Emmanuel Macron, facing the biggest crisis of his presidency, announced a series of concessions on Monday to defuse the explosive “yellow vest” crisis, which swelled up from rural and small-town France last month.
The package of tax and minimum wage measures for low-income workers, coupled with bitter winter weather this weekend, appeared to have helped bring calm to the country after more than a month of clashes and disruption.
France was also hit by a fresh deadly terror attack on Tuesday night when a gunman opened fire at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, leading the government to urge people to stay at home to spare the stretched security forces.
Richard Ferrand, the head of the National Assembly, welcomed the “necessary” weakening of the protests, adding that “there had been a massive response to their demands”. “The time for dialogue has come,” he said. An estimated 66,000 people took to the streets across France, according to figures from the interior ministry at 6pm, half the level of a week ago.
“It’s a bit of a failure because the state is stopping us from being able to demonstrate properly,” Marie, a 35-year-old domestic helper, said in Paris after travelling from her home south of the capital.
Another protester in the southeastern city of Lyon, Francis Nicolas, 49, said: “It’s a bit disappointing. We expected there to be more people, but the movement won’t end.”
In Paris, the more than 8,000 police on duty easily outnumbered the 2,200 protesters who were counted on the streets of the capital by local authorities in the early afternoon.
There had been 168 arrests by 6pm, far down on the roughly 1,000 of last Saturday. Tear gas was occasionally fired, but a fraction of the amount was used compared with the weekends of Dec 8 or Dec 1 when graffiti was daubed on the Arc de Triomphe in scenes that shocked France.
Minor clashes were reported in southwestern Bordeaux where teargas was used and projectiles thrown. It was a similar picture in Toulouse, Nantes, Besancon, Nancy, SaintEtienne and Lyon.