Protesters clash with police on the Place Vauban in Paris
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)Police used tear gas and baton charges to beat back pension reform protesters by the Tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris on Tuesday.
The ugly scenes followed a day of strikes and street demonstrations which saw more than 1.2 million mobilise.
“A Paris march involving hundreds of thousands was peaceful, right until the very end when there were disturbances,” said a local police spokesman.
Referring to the national monument where Napoleon is buried, the spokesman added: “Stones were thrown at officers around Les Invalides, before order was restored in the early evening.”
It followed Interior Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin accusing “champagne socialists” of opposing pension reform.
He said 11,000 police were mobilised, as just over 1.2 million showed their opposition to raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Multiple train and metro lines shut down, along with schools, colleges, medical centres, and other public services.
In a controversial interview published in Le Parisien newspaper, Mr Darmanin said many of those taking part wanted “a society without work, without effort”.
He said they were “champagne socialists” who wanted to “screw up the country” as it struggled to compete in the global economy.
Under new government proposals being considered by the Paris parliament, people will have to work two years longer to achieve a full pension.
This has been hailed by President Emmanuel Macron as vital to safeguard France’s hugely expensive system.
He has welcomed “democratic protest” but said any rioting would be met with “the full force of the law’”.
His pension reform ideas have proved deeply unpopular, with 68% saying they are opposed to it, according to an IFOP poll published this month.
All the country’s unions have condemned the measure, as have the Left-wing and Far-right opposition parties in the National Assembly.
Mr Macron’s Renaissance party does not have a parliamentary majority, so has to rely on the support of around 60 MPs from the conservative Republicans party to get his pension reforms through.
With the parliamentary process taking months, Mr Macron faces a rolling campaign of opposition.
Most other European countries have taken steps to raise the official retirement age, which in Britain is currently 66.
President Macron made an earlier attempt to reform the system in 2019, but scrapped it because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
This is the seventh attempted pension reform in France since Socialist president François Mitterrand cut the retirement age to 60 in 1982.
Every subsequent attempt to reverse that change has led to mass opposition on the street.
In 2010, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy raised the retirement age to 62, despite weeks of mass protests.
