Paris protests: Demonstrators clash with police as Macron survives pension votes
Mar 21, 2023
Paris [France], March 21 : Demonstrators clash with police in Paris as President Emmanuel Macron's government survived pension votes, according to Al Jazeera.
After President Emmanuel Macron's recent pension reform, protests broke out in the heart of Paris and other French cities as demonstrators clashed with police who used tear gas to clear some areas. The administration narrowly avoided two votes of no-confidence.
On Monday night, protests were recorded in Dijon, Strasbourg, where demonstrators broke the windows of a department store. Several students also protested across Paris to show discontent over pension reform.
After tense confrontations between protestors and security personnel, police said that more than 100 people were detained in Paris alone, reported Al Jazeera.
Firefighters fought to extinguish stacks of flaming trash that had been set on fire by demonstrators and left uncollected for days on some of the most famous avenues in the French city.
According to Al Jazeera, the protesters have time and again claimed that the government has raised the state pension age without a parliamentary vote, which has now become a cause of major concern over growing unrest in the country.
The agitators have taken to the streets of Paris to oppose the reform and multiple refinery strikes are also taking place across France. The escalating unrest and the mounting trash piles on Paris' streets as a result of refuse workers joining in the action, have now put Macron in a tough state.
Notably, Macron pushed the unpopular pension reform scheme which proposed to raise the retirement age for most workers to 64 from 62 without a vote of lawmakers in the National Assembly on Thursday, defying mass protests throughout the country, The New York Times reported.
Macron's decision prompted raucous protests inside the assembly chamber, where opposition lawmakers sang the French national anthem and banged on their desks.
The upper house of Parliament, the Senate, approved the Bill on Thursday last week.
