Protests erupt amid French transition

A movement to Block Everything’ breaks out as nation’s new prime minister is installed

- By JOHN LEICESTER, JEFFREY SCHAEFFER AND SAMUEL PETREQUIN

TENS of thousands demonstrated in Paris alone on Wednesday, denouncing President Emmanuel Macron.

PARIS Protesters blocked roads, lighted blazes and were met with volleys of tear gas on Wednesday in Paris and elsewhere in France, heaping pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and making new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's first day in office a baptism by fire.

The government announced hundreds of arrests, as demonstrations against Macron, budget cuts and other complaints spread to cities and towns.

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 took people into custody.

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.

Spreading protests

The "Bloquons Tout," or "Block Everything," protests, while mobilizing tens of thousands of people, nevertheless appeared less intense than previous bouts of unrest that have sporadically rocked France in both Macron's first and ongoing second term as president.

They included months of nationwide so-called yellow demonstrations vest against economic injustice in 2018-2019.

After his reelection in 2022, Macron also 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.