Macron comes home to turmoil
French leader orders meetings with opposition, protesters riled by fuel tax
PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron returned to France on Sunday from a summit in Argentina to find his country in turmoil after a day of violent protests.
After surveying the destruction, Macron ordered Prime Minister Édouard Philippe to meet with representatives of the “Yellow Vests” protest movement and with the leaders of the opposition political parties. Those meetings will start Monday.
A third weekend of nationwide protests by the movement, largely made up of working-class people angry about a planned increase in fuel taxes and their dwindling purchasing power, left burned cars and smashed store windows in several of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Paris. The movement is named for the high-visibility safety vests that motorists are supposed to wear when they have roadside breakdowns.
Broken glass and empty tear gas canisters fired by police littered the city, where hundreds of vandals joined the ranks of the protesters. One person died in the unrest this weekend outside Paris, bringing to three the number of casualties on the margins of the demonstrations over the past three weekends of protests.
More than 260 people were wounded nationwide, at least 133 of them in Paris, according to the prefecture of police. Some were bystanders caught in the fray who needed treatment after exposure to tear gas. About 412 people were arrested nationwide.
The prefect of Paris, Michel Delpuech, said at a news conference late Sunday that police had been faced with “extreme and unprecedented violence” and that protesters had thrown hammers and steel ball bearings at them.
Among those arrested were largely men in their 30s and 40s, some from the far right and some from the far left, but also “a number of protesters wearing yellow vests” who did not hesitate to join the fray, said Rémy Heitz, the Paris prosecutor.
Although the government has made no sign of reversing course on the gas tax increase that precipitated the most recent protests or of reducing other taxes, some of the Yellow Vests indicated that they were ready to negotiate.
They called for an “immediate and unconditional freeze in the tax increase on fuel” as well as the cancellation of new and more rigorous vehicle inspection rules, which raise costs for drivers. They also asked to change the electoral system to one of proportional representation, which would benefit smaller parties, including those on the far left and far right.