May Day marchers in France demand social justice, mount pressure on re-elected Macron

Thousands of people have filled the streets across France to hold May Day protests, demanding social justice and salary increases, in the first test for newly re-elected President Emmanuel Macron, who is also pushed to scrap his plan to raise the retirement age.

On Sunday, some 250 demonstrations were organized in capital Paris and other cities, including Lille, Nantes, Toulouse and Marseille, to mark International Labor Day commemorating laborers and the working class.

Rallies were mostly staged peacefully. However, in Paris, where trade unionists were joined by political figures - mostly from the left - and climate activists, police intervened after “Black Bloc” anarchists tried to put up a barricade in a street near La Republique Square.

Violence was also broke out in Paris on Sunday when a McDonald’s restaurant and a real estate agency on the Place Leon Blum were ransacked, their windows shattered and garbage bins torched.

Demonstrators carried banners reading “Retirement Before Arthritis", “Retirement at 60, Freeze Prices” and “Macron, Get Out.”

Macron had promised that if re-elected, he would continue pro-business reforms, including increasing the retirement age from 62 to 65.

“The stronger the mobilization for this May Day, the harder we will be able to weigh on the government's policies,” said Philippe Martinez, the head of the hardline CGT union, adding, “The government has got to deal with the purchasing power problem by raising wages.”

Macron targeted by tomato throw during first trip since re-election

Macron is targeted by a tomato throw during a walk in the Parisian suburb of Cergy-Pontoise.

Macron, 44, won a new five-year presidential term after beating far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in last Sunday's runoff election. His policies have been denounced for being more divisive and less popular, most notably his bloody handling of the ‘Yellow Vest’ movement, one of France’s most prolonged and potent protests in recent history.

The Yellow Vests staged more than 60 consecutive weeks of protests against economic hardship, mounting inequality, and a discredited political establishment. But their protests were met with a fierce crackdown that eventually smothered the movement.

Macron's re-election sparks protests in divided France; police kill two in Paris

President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election has triggered riots and protests across France with his far-right rival Marine Le Pen’s strong showing in the polls likely to make his second term more turbulent.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left leader who earned a strong third-place finish in the first round, was also attending the Paris march on Sunday. He wants to rally a union of the left, including the Greens, to secure an upper hand in parliament and force Macron into an awkward “cohabitation” but so far this has not yet occurred. 

“We will not make a single concession on pensions,” said Melenchon said before the march began, adding that he still hoped to reach an agreement to build a new “popular union” of the left as soon as Sunday evening.

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