Protesters blocked roads, set blazes and were met with volleys of police tear gas on Wednesday in Paris and elsewhere in France, seeking to heap pressure on President Emmanuel Macron by attempting to give his new prime minister a baptism of fire.
The interior minister announced nearly 200 arrests in the first hours of the planned day of nationwide demonstrations.
Although falling short of its self-declared intention to “Block Everything,” the protest movement that started online over the summer caused widespread hot spots of disruption, defying an exceptional deployment of 80,000 police who broke up barricades and swiftly made arrests.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said that a bus was set on fire in the western city of Rennes and that damage to a power line blocked trains on a line in the southwest. He alleged that protesters were attempting to create “a climate of insurrection.”
Still, the initial protests appeared less intense than previous bouts of unrest that have sporadically rocked Macron’s leadership. They included months of nationwide so-called yellow vest demonstrations that roiled his first term as president. After his reelection in 2022, Macron faced firestorms of anger over unpopular pension reforms and nationwide unrest and rioting in 2023 after the deadly police shooting of a teenager on Paris’ outskirts.
Nevertheless, groups of protesters repeatedly tried to block Paris’ beltway during the morning rush hour on Wednesday. They erected barricades and hurled objects at police officers, blocked and slowed traffic and carried out other protest actions. It added to the sense of crisis that has again gripped France following its latest government collapse on Monday, when Prime Minister François Bayrou lost a parliamentary confidence vote.
Macron was installing a new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, on Tuesday, and the protests immediately presented him with a challenge.
The “Bloquons Tout,” or “Block Everything,” movement gathered momentum over the summer on social media and in encrypted chats, calling for a day of blockades, strikes, demonstrations and other acts of protests.
The movement, which has grown virally with no clear identified leadership, has a broad array of demands — many targeting contested belt-tightening budget plans that Bayrou championed before his demise — as well as broader complaints about inequality.
The spontaneity of “Block Everything” is reminiscent of the yellow vests. That movement started with workers camping out at traffic circles to protest a hike in fuel taxes, sporting high-visibility vests. It quickly spread to people across political, regional, social and generational divides angry at economic injustice and Macron’s leadership.
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