At least 250 arrested in France as protesters clash with police

Paris: Protesters blocked roads, lit blazes and were met with volleys of tear gas on Wednesday in Paris and elsewhere in France, heaping pressure on President Emmanuel Macron by attempting to give his new prime minister a baptism of fire.

The government’s interior ministry announced 250 arrests in the first hours of what was a planned day of nationwide demonstrations against Macron, budget cuts and other complaints.

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. In the southwest, fire damage to electrical cables stopped train services on one line and disrupted traffic on another, government transport authorities said.

The protests appeared so far to be less intense than previous bouts of unrest that have sporadically rocked Macron in both his first and ongoing second term as president. They included months of nationwide so-called yellow vest demonstrations against economic injustice in 2018-2019.

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, demonstrations and sporadic clashes with riot police in Paris and elsewhere on Wednesday added to a 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.

Groups of protesters repeatedly tried to block Paris’s beltway during the morning rush hour and were dispersed by police and tear gas. Elsewhere in the capital, protesters piled up trash cans and hurled objects at police officers. Paris police reported 159 arrests through the morning.