For the moment, the French unions maintain their unity of action and have called for a new day of mobilizations, on June 6, against the pension reform and the consequent two-year delay in the legal retirement age.
Union cohesion was not taken for granted after a May Day, on Monday, very demanding, but which did not bring a human tide against the government’s policy to the streets. The nuances of more or less pragmatism among the various union organizations are set aside for now. They are not willing to capitulate.
June 6 will be the fourteenth protest since the beginning of the year and will take place two days before the vote in the National Assembly on a bill, raised by the diverse group Libertades, Independientes, Overseas and Territories (LIOT) to annul the reform of pensions recently promulgated by Macron.
Yesterday was a day of analysis and damage assessment. The riots into which some demonstrations degenerated, due to the presence of black blocs (anarchists and radical anti-system) were more serious than usual, with destruction of shops, looting and fires. According to the Ministry of the Interior, there were 406 police officers injured – including one severely burned when he was hit by a Molotov cocktail in Paris – and 504 arrests. The Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, condemned the violence in harsh terms during the parliamentary session of questions to the Government and also warned that “social progress will not come from saucepans”.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, denounced the “complicit silence” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insumisa (radical left) in the face of violence, and the latter accused the former of being “one hundred percent responsible” for what happened. “The police officers must be wary of such a pitiful boss,†Mélenchon tweeted.
The associations of merchants and restaurateurs in the center of the big cities are exasperated by the losses they suffer from such frequent riots, not only because of the destruction, but also because the fear of riots scares away customers. Some, like Thierry Fontaine, a spokesman for Lyon restaurateurs, have called for store-free zones to be designated for demonstrations, something difficult to achieve in practice.
In France, an environment of institutional crisis and ungovernability reigns, due to the absence of a parliamentary majority that supports the Government and the impossibility of building consensus, a situation that is complicated by the fact that the radical left and the extreme right have grown a lot in representation and they seek permanent anger. According to historian Pierre Rosanvallon, this is the worst crisis since the Algerian war (1954-1962).
The downgrading of the credit rating for France announced last Friday by the Fitch agency has had a psychological and political impact. The news gave ammunition to the government’s rivals. Fitch lowered the grade, among other reasons, for “the political impasse and (sometimes violent) social movements.” The fear is that Standard
Speaking to Le Figaro yesterday, the president of Los Republicanos (LR, traditional right), Éric Ciotti, warned that “France is dancing on a volcano” and is involved in “an infernal spiral” due to the unstoppable growth of debt and the growing gap with Germany, the reference country.
