Have French students turned to the pulse for pension reform? France lived on Monday another night with spontaneous youth protests with riots in Paris, as well as in other locations, such as Strasbourg, Dijon, Rennes, Lyon or Marseille. Small barricades with garbage bags on fire, some broken bank windows, clashes between demonstrators and police… The same incidents have been repeated daily since the French government announced the approval through a ‘decree’ of the controversial increase in age minimum retirement from 62 to 64 years (with 42 or 43 years of contributions to receive a full pension).
These images symbolize the social turmoil in the neighboring country, where roadblocks and unlimited strikes are also repeated every day, often broken by tense police interventions in refineries or garbage collection centers. In fact, the security forces intervened on Tuesday to requisition a fuel depot in Fòs-sur-Mer (near Marseille), where 90% of the workers are on strike and this has caused gasoline shortage problems in the south of France. The officers fired tear gas to dislodge the strikers. In recent days, there have also been rugby scrums between unionists and riot police at the entrances to garbage collection truck garages in the Paris region.
French society is boiling at the moment. A part of the media spotlight is placed on the nocturnal concentrations of young people, which degenerate into urban riots. The police reported 287 arrested (234 of them in Paris) Monday night. A similar number of people questioned had already occurred last Thursday, after the Government announced the recourse to the controversial article 49.3 of the Constitution to approve it by government decree, and without a parliamentary vote. in the aftermath to ratify it, the increase in the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
Response to the controversial approval by decree
The National Assembly debated on Monday two motions of censure in response to the use of 49.3, which felt very badly in public opinion after two months of strikes and massive demonstrations, the most massive in this 21st century in France. After the failure of those two motions —although one of them did not reach an absolute majority by only 9 voteswhich reflected the weakness of the Executive of Élisabeth Borne and President Emmanuel Macron—, the spontaneous marches of young people, known as wild demonstrationsmultiplied in various points of the capital.
“As the demonstrations organized by the unions did not change the government’s mind, now we make these wild protests to express our discontent,” Lucie Kerherve, 22, a master’s student, told EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA, from the Prensa Ibérica group. in Medieval History, present on Monday night together with a hundred young people in one of these spontaneous demonstrations in the area of the Opera in Paris, whose adjacent streets were filled with charred garbage bags. “Above all, I think of my parents who have been working since they were 19 years old and, since they were unemployed, they will have to retire at 67 or 68 years old,” added this student from the Sorbonne University.
After having played a secondary role in the mobilizations against the pension reform, the students organize night marches with riots for the fifth consecutive night
The appeal to 49.3 “has shown us that they are willing to do anything to approve this law. Right now, the government is weak and feverish”, defended Embla Fautra, 25, who works in a translation agency and is a member of France Insumisa (affiliated with Podemos). “It seems to me a undemocratic medium”, added Antoine Kintz, 21, currently unemployed after having studied Architecture, and who also attended one of the spontaneous protests in the capital.
It is, in fact, self-organized concentrations through Telegram, Twitter or Instagram. Its participants are engaged in playing cat and mouse with the police. Some protests, according to the demonstrators themselves, “Hong Kong style”, in reference to the demonstrations with riots that took place in the autonomous Chinese territory in 2019. They also recall what happened in Catalonia after the sentence in the ‘procés’ trial three and a half years ago. Urban violence is nothing new in France. There have already been major riots, more serious than the current ones, with the revolt of the ‘banlieues’ in 2005 or the yellow vests in 2018.
Unions fear being overwhelmed
After high school and university students played a secondary role in the massive strikes of recent months —something relevant in a country where the involvement of young people had been a determining factor in the success or failure of social movements in the last decades—, the approval by decree of the reform has had a mobilizing effect among the youngest. It is difficult, however, to specify if it is just a temporary fever among young people who were already mobilized against the reform or a broader effect. The new general strike convened on Thursday – the seventh in two months – will be a good thermometer of indignation in this segment of the population.
Union leaders view these self-organized protests with some mistrust. They are aware of the risk that images of burning barricades sway public opinion, contrary to the increase in the minimum retirement age and favorable to the protests. “The choice tonight (of the Government) has been to leave the streets in the hands of radicalism. It seems dangerous to me”, lamented on Monday Laurent Berger, the general secretary of the CFDT, one of the promoters of the ‘labor parols’ in recent months.
In addition to the burning barricades, these spontaneous protests have led to criticism of excessive use of force by police. Images of riot police beating journalists or peaceful protesters on the ground with batons, or even an agent punching a static and apparently harmless protester, who was left unconscious for several minutes, circulated on social media. That surfaced the recurring debate on police violence in France. The response of the security forces to the material violence of the yellow vests had already left a sad balance of one person dead, five protesters who lost a hand, 30 who were left without an eye or nearly 300 with head injuries.
According to the television network BFM TV, of the 292 people arrested on Thursday, 283 of them left the police station a few hours later without any type of sanction or judicial reprisal. Faced with criticism of making arbitrary arrests by International Amnesty, the Ministry of the Interior indicated this Tuesday that 94 agents were injured, most of them slightly, since Thursday. The riots reappeared in France and with them the controversies over the use of police force.