The first day of the G7 on Saturday was marked by the arrival and the dinner of the leaders of the summit in Biarritz, but also by an unauthorized demonstration, Saturday evening, in Bayonne, which gathered 9,000 people according to the police, 15,000 d after the organizers. A total of 68 people were arrested and 38 detained. Opponents of the G7 are planning more actions by the end of the summit on Monday.
Portraits of Macron unhooked
For Sunday, several anti-globalization and anti-G7 organizations have organized a new event to be held in the morning in Bayonne, "a march of portraits" where should be gathered more than one hundred official portraits of President Emmanuel Macron who have been picked up in various town halls in France for several months.
Another "action" was announced Saturday night for Sunday, without further details, after the co-organizers of the counter-summit, the groups Alternatives-G7 and "G7 Ez" (No to the G7, in Basque), decided to cancel "peaceful rallies" scheduled Sunday at seven points in the region of Biarritz to "encircled" the G-7 symbolically.
"Oversized police device"
The organizers denounced in a statement Saturday evening the "oversized police device" and the "security climate prevailing in the Basque Country", and considered that "the conditions are not met to ensure the safety and physical integrity" of participants on the actions initially planned Sunday.
Some 13,200 police and gendarmes were deployed in the Biarritz region as part of the security apparatus of the G7 summit, for fear of demonstrations that could lead to violence.