A few hundred people gathered this Sunday, March 19 in the heart of Paris in the late afternoon. The demonstrators chanted for the fourth consecutive evening slogans aimed at Emmanuel...Pension reform: "the street expresses itself" again in the center of Paris Protesters surrounded by police in the Les Halles neighborhood of Paris, March 19, 2023. AP - Lewis Joly Text by: RFI Follow 2 min A few hundred people gathered this Sunday, March 19 in the heart of Paris in the late afternoon. The demonstrators chanted for the fourth consecutive evening slogans targeting Emmanuel Macron an

Pension reform: "the street expresses itself" again in the center of Paris

Protesters surrounded by police in the Les Halles neighborhood of Paris, March 19, 2023. AP - Lewis Joly

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

A few hundred people gathered this Sunday, March 19 in the heart of Paris in the late afternoon. The demonstrators chanted for the fourth consecutive evening slogans targeting Emmanuel Macron and the police. They reject the use of 49.3 to pass the pension reform.

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Started around 18 p.m. in Les Halles, a very commercial and busy area, the rally took place peacefully, according to an AFP journalist on site. According to a police source, the rally, attended by 350 people, had not been declared. An attempt to leave in a wild procession was prevented by the police and 17 people were arrested.

We are here to make an act of presence in the street for Act 4. We are young workers. So it's not necessarily easy to be there every night. We put ourselves in danger vis-à-vis our hierarchy, but hey... For a Sunday night, it's pretty cool and Saturday too, it's cool. On weekends at least, there are people," said one protester. "We're naked in a street. I see quite a few people coughing, so I guess he had a little gas (tear gas). But hey, it's pretty usual huh! " says another protester.

We have a discontent to express and we will not hesitate to do so until the end, until the withdrawal of the reform...

Pension reform: words of demonstrators in the center of Paris

Simon Rozé

The capital has experienced three evenings of tension since the announcement Thursday of the appeal by Elisabeth Borne to article 49.3 of the Constitution which allows the adoption of a text without a vote, except motion of censure. On Thursday and Friday, several thousand people had expressed their anger at Place de la Concorde, leading the police prefecture to prohibit until Tuesday any gathering on this square, located near the National Assembly, at the foot of the Champs-Élysées, and which remained Sunday under police surveillance.

Saturday, at the call of the CGT Ile-de-France, 4,000 people, according to the police, had converged Place d'Italie where incidents had broken out.

► Read also: Pension reform in France: after the 49.3, the mobilization continues throughout the country

Pension reform: "the street expresses itself" again in the center of Paris

Pension reform: "the street expresses itself" again in the center of Paris

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