In Paris and other French cities, there were clashes on Saturday between the police and demonstrators of the Yellow West movement. Nationwide, the authorities spoke of 32,000 demonstrators.
In Paris, police deployed tear gas in the afternoon on the magnificent boulevard Champs-Élysées to protesters armed with helmets, masks and pyrotechnics and blocked access to the Place de la Concorde.
According to an AFP reporter, the police also fired tear gas grenades near the triumphal arch. Police officers allegedly threw stones at them, so they used tear gas and tried to keep the yellow vests away from the Place de l'Etoile.
At the Place de l'Étoile, the demonstration was supposed to end around 5 pm, which had started at the Ministry of Finance and had remained peaceful all along. Several thousand demonstrators took part in the march.
In the southern French city of Nîmes, there were also clashes between police and yellow vests. Demonstrators with metal plates faced police officers firing tear gas and hard rubber bullets. Several people suffered injuries.
AFP
Also in other parts of the country there were demonstrations with thousands of participants. New this Saturday was a bigger demonstration in Bourges in the center of France. One of them was Priscilla Ludosky, one of the early spokesmen for the "yellow vests" of the moderate wing. According to the authorities, there followed more than 5000 yellow vests followed by a widespread use of social networks call for protest. In Strasbourg, between 1500 and 2000 demonstrators took to the streets and moved from the European Parliament towards the city center and the main train station.
Nationwide, the police had a large contingent of 80,000 police officers in action, including 5,000 in Paris alone, because the authorities feared an escalation of violence. The police also announced tougher laws, which provide for a ban on demonstrators for rioters. In Paris, the police arrested 74 suspects. Amongst other things, the reason given was that they had "prohibited weapons" or participated in a violent group.
It was the ninth consecutive Saturday that the "yellow vests" took to the streets. At 14.00, there were 32,000 demonstrators nationwide, including 8,000 in Paris, according to the Interior Ministry. The police expected nationwide with a similar high participation as before the Christmas days. For December 15, the authorities had given the number of participants with 66,000, which the "yellow vests" consider greatly understated.
The protests of the yellow vests have plunged France's President Emmanuel Macron into the worst crisis of his term. Earlier this year, a survey revealed that a large majority of French people are critical of the president's administration. Macron had also canceled his participation in the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday, reason should be the ongoing protests.
Since mid-November, the movement has been demonstrating against the government's social and fiscal policy and against perceived as too low purchasing power. Again and again there were rioting, hundreds of yellow vests and security forces were injured since the beginning.
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Head of state Emmanuel Macron tries to appease the protest movement through a "civil dialogue", which should begin next Tuesday. Citizens should be able to make suggestions for reform. But most demonstrators can not do that much. A yellow-vests wearier from Paris, Albertville in the Savoie department, 34-year-old Charlotte, was just ridiculed for Macron's "Dialogue". "That's Quark, a distraction maneuver," she said. "We do not want to talk anymore, we want action."
Originally, the yellow-vein movement had targeted diesel for high fuel prices and the planned eco-tax. Later, the protest mixed with general discontent about the policy of the government. Their announced billion-dollar concessions, which provide, inter alia, more money for minimum wage earners and relief for pensioners, reject the demonstrators as insufficient. Many call for further tax cuts, referendums based on the Swiss model and Macron's resignation.
Thousands of people also took to the streets in London on Saturday. Following the example of the French yellow-vein movement, they also wore yellow vests and demanded an end to austerity and a new election in the face of Brexit. Politicians and trade unionists from across the country followed the call of the campaign "The People's Assembly Against Austerity".