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France banned protests in front of parliament on Saturday after a second night of trouble caused by President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to change pensions without getting a vote from parliament.
In other parts of the country, however, peaceful marches started after Macron’s government used a controversial executive power on Thursday to force through the bill by decree.
The move has angered politicians and sparked angry protests in the streets, giving the 45-year-old leader one of his biggest challenges with less than a year left in his second and final term.
Two motions of no confidence in the government have been filed by lawmakers from the opposition. According to sources in parliament, these motions will be talked about on Monday afternoon.
They want to get enough support to get rid of the cabinet and get rid of the law that will make people retire at 64 instead of 62.
On Saturday, police in Paris banned gatherings at the Place de la Concorde, which is across the Seine river from parliament. This was done because some protesters and police had fought during unplanned gatherings there the two nights before.
It said that it was doing this because there were “serious risks to public order.”
Regional unions called for a weekend of protests, but people marched in towns and cities all over the country.
Ariane Laget, who is 36 years old, was one of about 200 people who protested in the southern town of Lodeve.
“We’ve had enough. We feel like we’re being trampled on and no one is listening, “she told me.
In the western city of Nantes, there were also a lot of people on the streets.
“Death to the king,” said one sign, which seemed to mean the president.
Thursday will be another day of strikes and rallies across the country, called for by unions.
Friday, thousands of people gathered in Place de la Concorde to show how angry they were that the government was going ahead with the reform, even though there had been two months of strikes and protests against the change.
People in groups threw bottles and fireworks at the police, who then fired tear gas to try to get people out of the square. The police said they caught 61 people.
In the city of Lyon in the southeast, protesters tried to break into a town hall and set it on fire, police said. 36 people were arrested.
Polls show that about two-thirds of French people are against the reform, which also means that people will have to work longer to get their full pension.
The government says it needs to do this to keep the system from going into debt and to make France more like its neighbors in Europe, where the legal retirement age is usually higher.
But people who don’t like the changes say they are unfair to young people who start working in physically hard jobs and to women who put their careers on hold to raise children.
Since mid-January, some of the biggest crowds in decades have come to protests, but the movement seemed to be losing steam in the days before the government passed the bill.
The city workers who pick up trash in the capital, however, have kept going on strike. By Friday, an estimated 10,000 tonnes of trash were still sitting in the streets.
On Saturday, though, a union representative said that strikers at three incinerators outside of Paris would let some garbage trucks through “to reduce the chance of an epidemic.”
Police said that trucks from five depots were back on the job.
In the energy sector, the CGT union said that strikers would stop work at two refineries by this weekend or Monday at the latest.
Friday, unions from the national train company SNCF asked workers to keep going on strike, which has caused a lot of trouble on the network.
Last year, Macron made the pension reform the most important part of his campaign to stay in office.
But after National Assembly elections in June, the former banker lost his majority in parliament.
The government used a controversial part of the constitution on Thursday because it was worried it didn’t have enough support in the lower house to get the pensions bill voted on.
But most people think that Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s cabinet will survive any vote of no confidence.
The motion would need support from about half of the right-wing Republicans in the opposition, which is not likely.
