From Lille to Marseille, via Paris, opponents of pension reform gave voice again on Thursday. But participation has withered since the jump caused by 49.3. This twelfth day of action, on the eve of the verdict of the Constitutional Council, brought together 380,000 people throughout France, according to the Ministry of the Interior, including 42,000 in Paris. The CGT has more than a million participants in France, including 400,000 in the capital.
For the third week in a row, the number of demonstrators has decreased in processions all over France, where 570,000 demonstrators were counted last week according to the Interior. In the West, bastion of protest, they were thus 10,000 in Nantes according to the police, 25,000 according to the organizers, in both cases the lowest since March 11 – date of the weakest mobilization at the national level. nowadays. Ditto in Rennes, where 6,500 to 15,000 people marched, in Rouen (4,500 to 9,000) and in Le Havre (between 3,800 and 20,000), where the gauges have rarely been so low.
The trend is also confirmed in the center, in Orléans (2,700 to 6,000) or Clermont-Ferrand (6,000 to 10,000) and in the south, from Bayonne (3,000 to 7,000) to Nice (2,700 to 15,000 ) via Montpellier (5,000 to 10,000). As is often the case in the event of a reflux, the differences are widening between the estimates, in particular in Toulouse with a difference of one to eight (from 9,000 to 70,000) and even a record of one to twenty in Marseille (between 6,500… and 130,000).
No “abdication” of the movement, ensures the left
The left-wing politicians present this Thursday in the Paris procession assured that the mobilization would not stop, whatever the decision of the Constitutional Council on Friday. The head of the LFI deputies Mathilde Panot judged that the institution “could make sure to come out on top” of this crisis, by completely censoring the text. And if she does not censor the whole, “then the president must not promulgate the law, otherwise he will no longer be able to govern the country”, she estimated.
The first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure for his part considered that “we are at an impasse, in which the government and the president have led us”, adding that “there is something completely stuck in the kingdom of France”, during a joint Nupes press briefing.
“Do not believe that because tomorrow there would be a decision of the Constitutional Council which would be taken, there would be a form of abdication on our part”, he warned, promising to continue to defend, “by some means whatever, this mobilization movement born before our eyes (…) to give it a political outlet”.