Use of force signals ‘crisis of authority’ as France’s pension battle turns to unrest

First an epic tussle with the unions, then a bitter standoff in parliament, and now a full-blown crisis in the streets: France’s festering pension dispute took a turn for the worse this week, with protests against Macron’s deeply unpopular plans hardening and escalating amid scenes of chaos in Paris and other cities.

The unrest – which began last Thursday after Macron used special executive powers to ram his pension reform through parliament – has seen security forces fight running battles with protesters late into the night even as firefighters race to extinguish hundreds of blazes.

Outrage at Macron’s perceived “denial of democracy”, coupled with his refusal to bow to millions of peaceful protesters, have cooked up an explosive cocktail – with tonnes of uncollected rubbish providing the fuel. Heavy-handed police tactics have in turn exacerbated the unrest, in a spiral of violence that France is all too familiar with.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said more than 450 people were arrested on Thursday during the most violent day of protests against Macron’s bid to raise the retirement age, which polls say a large majority of the French oppose. The minister blamed radical anarchist groups for clashing with police, smashing shop windows and setting uncollected litter ablaze.

“We will yield nothing to violence,” Macron told a news conference on Friday after an EU summit in Brussels. He has been in unapologetic mode since he ordered his government to trigger article 49.3 of the constitution to bypass parliament.

The unrest did, however, force the French president to postpone a planned visit by Britain’s new king Charles III, whom Macron – dubbed a “presidential monarch” by his critics – was due to host at the gilded royal palace of Versailles.

“The reunion of kings in Versailles has been dispersed by the people,” leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fierce critic of Macron, promptly mocked in a tweet. “The English are well aware that Darmanin is useless when it comes to security,” he added in a dig at France’s interior minister, who was savaged by the British press following the fiasco of last year’s Champions League final in Paris.

‘We’re on the eve of an insurrection’

Darmanin, typically considered a hardliner in Macron’s government, was among ministers who pleaded with the president not to trigger article 49.3 – and for good reason. He knew the backlash would fall under his remit as months of peaceful protests gave way to violent outbursts of anger.

From the start of the protest movement, trade unions had urged the government not to ignore the millions of peaceful demonstrators turning out in cities, towns and villages up and down the country, warning of dire consequences should it remain deaf to their anger.

“I’m warning the president, he must withdraw this reform before the catastrophe unfolds,” Laurent Berger, the head of the moderate CFDT union, France’s largest, repeated on Monday. “We’ve been scrupulously legit so far, but the temptation of violence is there.”

The warning from the violence-averse CFDT leader was indicative of how much the mood has soured three months into a bitter dispute pitting Macron against a large majority of the French – a dispute many police officers are reluctant to end up on the wrong side of.

“We’re on the eve of an insurrection,” a senior riot police officer was quoted as saying in a Mediapart feature on Tuesday, flagging the risk of casualties as exhausted and overstretched forces face mounting levels of anger and violence.

“The president is playing with fire,” the officer added, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This could end up in tragedy: the death of a protester.”

More than 400 police officers were injured in street clashes on Thursday alone, Darmanin told reporters, without giving a figure for the number of injured among protesters and members of the public caught up in the unrest, which saw one woman lose a thumb in the Normandy city of Rouen.

In northern Lille, the local police chief was lightly injured by a stone, while a video of Paris clashes that went viral showed a police officer in helmet and body armour being knocked unconscious and plunging to the ground after he was struck in the head by a projectile. Many more videos showed police officers beating and pepper-spraying protesters and bystanders at close range.

Even before Thursday’s escalation, the rising violence had prompted Amnesty International, France’s human rights ombudswoman, Claire Hédon, and even the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association, Clément Voule, to each voice their concern about the heavy-handed policing as well as restrictions on people’s right to protest. On Friday, the Council of Europe became the latest body to condemn police’s “excessive use of force”.

The unrest has revived a longstanding debate on police brutality in France, and once again highlighted the lack of checks on law enforcement in a country where the minister in charge of police oversight is commonly referred to as “France’s top cop”.

‘Like the Yellow Vests – if not worse’

At the start of the protest movement, the French capital’s new police chief Laurent Nunez had won plaudits for his apparent change of tactics, which saw riot police stand well away from the huge crowds of peaceful protesters – in contrast with his predecessor’s more confrontational approach.

“I don’t want us to be accused of causing rallies to degenerate into violence,” Nunez told reporters at the time. “By remaining invisible, we avoid contact with the hardliners who are merely looking for a fight.”

However, the apparent change of approach did not prevent sporadic incidents from occurring. As early as January 19, on the first day of rallying, a young photographer was severely injured during a police charge, resulting in the amputation of a testicle. Such incidents have become more frequent in recent days, with violence escalating in the wake of Macron’s use of article 49.3.

According to Christian Mouhanna, a policing expert at the CNRS research centre, the dramatic surge in violent clashes witnessed in recent days reflects a return to “traditional” policing methods introduced in the wake of Islamist terrorist attacks.

“Policing and crowd control have hardened since the terrorist attacks of 2015, becoming more aggressive and less inclined to negotiation,” he said, citing police crackdowns on protests against labour reforms in 2016 and the Yellow Vest unrest that started two years later.

“Protests movements without a clear structure or leadership are of course harder to contain, but the authorities’ tendency to downplay cases of police abuse only encourages the more repressive elements in the force,” Mouhanna said. He pointed to a special motorised unit known as the BRAV-M, whose baton-wielding officers are frequently accused of beating people at random – be they protesters, bystanders or journalists covering the rallies.

“Members of the BRAV-M are not trained to maintain public order and their actions often stoke tensions, including with riot police and gendarmes whose are the real specialists in this domain,” he explained.

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Exhaustion and overstretch are compounding difficulties for security forces as they contend with multiple challenges at once. Over the past week, the interior minister has counted around 400 daily “protest actions” across the country, ranging from spontaneous marches to the occupation of motorways, fuel depots and train stations.

 “The protesters’ strategy is to wear us out,” one officer told Darmanin during a visit to a police station in Paris on Tuesday, witnessed by a journalist from Le Parisien. “We start at 6 in the morning with students blockading schools and end late at night (chasing protesters in the streets). Fatigue is kicking in and this can lead us to lose our focus at times.”

In the thick of protests, “We have only a few seconds to distinguish between Black Blocks, peaceful protesters and journalists. It’s not always easy,” said a second officer. Another said the situation was “just like the Yellow Vests – if not worse”.

Compromise or force

Claims of arbitrary or “preventive” arrests – a tactic widely deployed at the height of the Yellow Vest insurgency – have drawn particular scrutiny, with lawyers, magistrates and opposition parties accusing the authorities of “hijacking” the judiciary to repress the protest movement.

In Paris alone, more than 420 people were detained during the first three days of protests triggered by Macron’s decision to bypass parliament last Thursday. All but a handful were released within 48 hours free of charge. They included “bystanders, minors, homeless people and others who had just walked out of a meeting,” lawyer Coline Bouillon told AFP, adding that she and other lawyers would file a complaint for “arbitrary detention”.

“The judiciary is not at the disposal of those seeking to repress social movements,” the Syndicat de la magistrature, a union of magistrates, wrote in a press release on Monday, condemning “illegal police violence”, the “misuse of police custody” and attempts to “hijack the judiciary”.

Meanwhile, lawmakers from the left-wing opposition denounced a campaign aimed at intimidating protesters with threats of arrest. They flagged Darmanin’s wrongful claims in the media that taking part in undeclared protests constitutes “an offence”.

The escalating arrests are a consequence of both a French tradition and the government’s current predicament, said Sebastian Roché, a sociologist who has written extensively about different policing methods in Europe.

“Maintaining public order is the most political of police tasks, coming directly under the control of the interior minister, which is a French specificity,” he explained. “It follows a nationwide strategy, which is why you see large-scale arrests everywhere and not at the discretion of local police forces.”

In the current context, Roché added, heavy-handed policing stems from the “crisis of authority” undermining Macron’s minority and deeply unpopular government. “When a government chooses force it is always because its authority is weakened,” he said.

Breaking his silence on the pension dispute this week, Macron said the “crowd” had “no legitimacy” in the face of France’s elected officials. In an interview on Wednesday, he appeared to draw a parallel between violent protests in France and the assaults on the US Congress and Brazil’s state institutions staged by supporters of former presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. He also accused trade unions of refusing to seek a compromise.

So far, the strategy has failed to pay off. An Odoxa poll conducted after his interview found that 70 percent of respondents felt the government was to blame for the clashes and that 83 percent thought the unrest would worsen.

“This crisis stems from a lack of political compromise and the solution cannot come from the police,” said Roché. “The president seems in no mood to compromise, so we can only imagine the crisis will drag on.”