Yellow Vest protests return to France
On Saturday, January 7, new protests by the "yellow vests" – a protest movement that began in the country in October 2018 – will take place in France, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The Yellow Vests are one of the largest protest movements in France in recent years. It arose spontaneously in the fall of 2018, when activists blocked roads, and the organization of actions took place largely through social networks. The reason for the actions was the increase in fuel taxes, and the main symbol was the fluorescent yellow vest, which, according to the law, must be in every car.
Most of the protests took place on Saturdays, and the slogans gradually turned anti-government: in addition to economic demands and lower fuel prices, activists demanded the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron. In Paris and other large cities, rallies were often accompanied by violence and destruction.
On the third Saturday of protests, December 1, 2018, according to police, 136 thousand people took to the streets of the country. On the Champs-Elysees that day, radicals burned cars and clashed with the police. The famous Arc de Triomphe, one of the symbols of Paris, was seriously damaged. Photos of broken statues, the “beheaded” Napoleon and graffiti on other monuments spread all over the world.
Scenes of police violence attracted no less attention from the press - law enforcement agencies used tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters. One of the informal leaders of the movement, Jerome Rodriguez, lost an eye. The case of the incorrect use of special means against demonstrators even reached the State Council of France.
The Yellow Vests managed to achieve serious concessions from the government. As Le Monde noted, the authorities allocated about 17 billion euros to help the poor and reduced taxes for the middle class. At the same time, the “yellow vests” never became a full-fledged political movement, although the leaders of many parties supported the demands of the protesters. With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the promotions stopped, and after that they did not reach their former scale.
This Saturday, the “yellow vests” plan to return to the streets of French cities. The organizers' main hope is for Paris, where the action will begin in the city center on Place Breteuil near the Eiffel Tower at 11 a.m. The march will take place along much of the left bank of Paris to Place Denfert-Rochereau in the 14th arrondissement. But the media note that we are talking only about the agreed route of the action. Some activists suggest going to the editorial office of the Le Monde newspaper, located near the Austerlitz train station, a few kilometers from the final point of the official action. This is how the “vests” plan to fight the “dictatorship” of media and propaganda.
The protesters' demands are a fight against inflation, new measures to support the population and a rejection of the pension reform. Le Parisien writes that activists also oppose the government's frequent use of Article 49.3 of the French Constitution. It allows the government to pass legislation without debate by MPs or a vote in the National Assembly, and has been used by Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne ten times since September 2022.
On the eve of the action, only a few hundred people were members of the organizers’ official groups on social networks. The Paris police prefecture did not say how many Interior Ministry officers will be involved in maintaining law and order. At the same time, one of the leaders of the “yellow vests”, quoted by the BFMTV channel, claims that this time they will learn about the action not from social networks, but from the media. The organizer, whose name the journalists did not name, is confident that the call to go to rallies and demonstrations has received “wide coverage.”
As PolitNavigator reported , France accepted 118,9 refugees from Ukraine.
Yellow Vest Protests Return to France