By Noemie Bisserbe and Stacy Meichtry
PARIS -- President Emmanuel Macron is facing unprecedented
pressure to roll back his overhauls of the French economy after a
fourth consecutive weekend of "yellow vest" protests unleashed
another torrent of rioting despite stepped up security.
The Macron government deployed the full weight of France's
security apparatus on Saturday, but it wasn't enough to contain a
movement that authorities said mobilized 136,000 protesters. They
included droves of rioters who waged pitched battles with police in
the heart of the French capital and other major cities, lighting
fires, smashing storefronts and leading to 135 injuries and more
than 1,000 arrests.
The weekend violence left Mr. Macron cornered like at no other
time in his presidency. Unable to control protesters through
security measures, Mr. Macron is now facing calls to placate the
masses by reversing course on his signature agenda: making France
more economically competitive through sweeping changes to its labor
market, taxes, public spending and pension system.
The 40-year-old former investment banker is scheduled to address
the nation on Monday evening, officials said. Many French are
calling for a shift in both policy and tone that discards the
top-down leadership style that has marked his first year-and-a-half
in office.
Though Mr. Macron doesn't have to face voters himself again
until 2022, panic has spread through the ranks of his allies and
supporters in the National Assembly, where he holds a commanding
majority. Lawmakers who were handpicked by Mr. Macron to run for
his party have provided unflinching support for his agenda until
now. But they are starting to question whether Mr. Macron's drive
to turn France's workforce, which is cosseted by job protections
and generous social benefits, into upwardly mobile go-getters has
run aground.
"France isn't a startup. People need empathy, dialogue," said
Patrick Vignal, a lawmaker who is in Mr. Macron's Republic on the
Move party.
The yellow vest, or gilet jaune, protesters -- so named because
of the reflective safety vest some of them wear -- are demanding
that Mr. Macron do something to repair what they say is an erosion
of their purchasing power. In rural France, which is home to many
of the protesters, households are struggling to make rent on
monthly disposable incomes as low as EUR1,500 (about $1,700).
Lawmakers like Mr. Vignal are pressing the government to
announce measures that swiftly put money in the pocket of middle
class and working class people. Proposals include cutting taxes
that retirees pay on pensions; increasing the minimum wage;
boosting social welfare payments; and persuading banks to stop
charging overdraft fees that add up to billions, Mr. Vignal
said.
Mr. Macron's administration has already delayed a fuel-tax
increase that sparked the protests, and French officials say the
government is weighing another demand: the reinstatement of a
decades-old wealth tax that Mr. Macron abolished as one of his
first acts as president in a bid to stimulate investment.
Earlier this year, Mr. Macron increased a tax that all French
people pay to fund the country's social security system in order to
create fiscal space to deliver a deeper cut on payroll taxes. That
benefited salaried employees while penalizing other forms of
income, such as pensions. The government also decided last summer
to stop pegging pension payments to the rate of inflation, a
measure that takes effect at the start of next year.
"Macron taxes the poor and gives to the rich. It's totally
unfair," said Serge Mairesse, a 62-year-old retired Air France
worker who lives in Aubervilliers, just north of Paris. Mr.
Mairesse joined the protest in Paris on Saturday with the aim of
reaching the Élysée Palace to "register his anger."
One challenge Mr. Macron faces is that many gilets jaunes
believe he is cut from different cloth, incapable of relating to
their struggles. The president is from the provincial town of
Amiens, north of Paris, but he was groomed by elite academies in
the capital before becoming a deal maker at Rothschild & Cie.
He uses antiquated idioms in his public speeches, and he has
garnered a reputation for gaffes when interacting with voters.
Mr. Macron's ministers fanned out on French media on Sunday,
pushing back against his critics, including President Trump, who
weighed in on the protest with a Saturday post on Twitter that
falsely claimed that French protesters were chanting "We Want
Trump!"
"I say to Donald Trump, and the president told him too: We don't
take part in American debates, let us live our life as a nation,"
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told French radio. He added
that video of people chanting "We want Trump" was actually filmed
during a Trump visit to London several months ago.
Many protesters say they will settle for nothing less than Mr.
Macron's resignation, and those who have attempted to negotiate
with the government say they have received threats over social
media from more extreme members of the movement.
Polls show that support for the demonstrations is strongest
among people who identify with political parties led by Marine Le
Pen of the far right and Jean-Luc Melenchon, a left-wing
firebrand.
On Sunday, some protesters were already organizing another round
of protests on Dec. 15. A group created a Facebook page for an
event located at the Élysée Palace titled, "Macron's farewell
party." More than 5,200 people had already marked themselves as
going. Another 39,000 said they were "interested."
"What we want above all is respect," said Benjamin Cauchy, who
is a spokesman for a group of protesters and who met with French
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe on Friday. Mr. Cauchy is calling
for constitutional changes allowing French people to directly
propose laws and hold referendums on proposed reforms.
The stark economic divide between city centers and the blighted
suburbs at their edges, known as banlieues, is also working against
Mr. Macron. Bands of young men have seized on the weekend protests
and riots as a means of distracting police, allowing them to maraud
at night, smashing through shop windows and looting everything from
iPhones to pharmaceuticals.
Paris went into lockdown Saturday as protesters arrived, with
shops boarding their windows up and down the city's celebrated
boulevards. Clad in heavy riot gear, police advanced down the
avenues flanked by armored cars. Other officers conducted random
searches to confiscate any objects that could be used as
weapons.
Protesters responded by prying cobblestones from the
Champs-Élysées and hurling them at police. They also stripped off
shop-window boarding to build barricades.
The clashes didn't produce the level of violence that erupted
last weekend, when protesters defaced the Arc de Triomphe and
rioted across some of the city's most upscale neighborhoods. Still,
the protests paralyzed the capital and other big cities at a time
when the holiday shopping traditionally kicks into high gear.
Tourists caught on the street took refuge inside of cafes and
restaurants that barricaded their doors and windows.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called the protests "a
catastrophe for our economy."
Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com and Stacy
Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 09, 2018 17:38 ET (22:38 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.