(Tiper Stock Exchange) – The protests do not stop in France after the go-ahead for the highly contested one pension reform which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old. Tomorrow, around 1 pm, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will address the French by answering questions from TF1 and France 2 journalists on live TV.
Meanwhile, (yet another) night of protests and very high tension in Paris where small groups of demonstrators have burned dumpsters and damaged surrounding areas. Particularly spectacular, the “invasion” of the Bastille and the Marais, around midnight, with the young people who lit the fires, fleeing towards the Place de la Concorde. “Dozens of people were violently arrested. We demand an immediate end to the arrests”, protested the leader of the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Stay in the saddle (by a whisker) the French government led by Elizabeth Borne which last night was saved by a handful of votes: in fact, the no-confidence motion presented by the Liot group stopped at 278 votes. 287 would have been needed, i.e. 9 more, for the approval which in fact would have stopped the squeeze on social security. If the motion was approved, the government would automatically fall.
But the climate remains hot. Elisabeth Borne “must go” or “the president must remove her from office,” she said immediately after the vote Marine Le Pen, group leader Rn (far right) in the French National Assembly. During the debate, the president of the deputies of France Insoumise (left), Mathilde Panot, had said: “Like the Roman emperor Caligula, President Macron has no sense of proportion, he asks for a forcing and barricades himself in his building. But even Caligula was defeated”
Now the ball to Macron who will have to find harmony with the French while the country is increasingly divided with a president who – with the pension reform shelved – would like to “move on” but appears more than ever isolated politically and at the lowest levels of popularity