Yellow Vest activists seek to revive their campaign against rising living costs, declining public services
\nparis
\nFrance\u2019s Yellow Vest movement filed plans for a major \u200bmarch through Paris on Saturday, presenting the government with its next major test after riots and looting last weekend shook confidence \u200cin its ability to maintain order.
\nPrime Minister Sebastien Lecornu was due to meet union leaders on Wednesday, seeking ways to defuse one of the worst crises France has faced in recent years and avoid a repeat of the violence that swept French cities on October 17.
\nA representative of the \u201cGilets Jaunes\u201d (Yellow Vests) movement, which is a grassroots \u200bgroup not tied to the unions, presented plans for a march across the heart of Paris, including areas that were ransacked just \u200bdays ago.
\nStudent groups have also called for protests the same day to push their demands for more investment in education. Yellow Vest activists are seeking to revive their campaign, which emerged in 2018, against rising living costs and declining public services.
\nInvestors fret, French borrowing costs climb
\nLast weekend\u2019s demonstrations rapidly degenerated into rampant violence, especially in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Limoges, which overwhelmed police and took hours to contain.
\nHighlighting \u200binvestor concern over the situation, French government borrowing costs have risen sharply this week, pushing benchmark 10-year bond yields to 5%, their highest level since July 2002.
\nAnalysts said markets are worried that the unrest could complicate government efforts to repair strained public finances at a time of already mounting budget pressures.
\nFrench President Emmanuel Macron said he would meet \u200bintelligence services on Thursday ahead of the new protests.
\nGovernment ministers have promised a vastly reinforced security operation after acknowledging shortcomings in their initial response, \u200bwith troops expected to be deployed alongside additional police.
\nIn a letter to unions ahead of Wednesday\u2019s meeting, Lecornu said their talks should focus on ensuring \u201cthe indispensable \u200cfreedom to demonstrate\u201d, which he said some were trying to curtail by associating it with \u201cunacceptable acts\u201d.
\nFrance\u2019s main unions have separately called a nationwide mobilisation for November 5.
\n\u201cThere is huge and legitimate anger, and the answer to that situation is not repression. It is a political response. That\u2019s what I will tell the prime minister today,\u201d Sophie Binet, head of the CGT union, told RTL radio.
\nPolitical backlash as government struggles
\nA second consecutive night of local curfews passed \u200bwithout major incidents in areas hit \u200bby the unrest, offering the government some respite as it prepared for fresh demonstrations.
\nThe unrest has triggered a political backlash ahead of presidential elections next year, with candidates from the far right and hard left performing strongly in polls.
\n\u201cThe government has lost \u200bcontrol of everything,\u201d far-right leader Marine Le Pen told Franceinfo radio.
\nThe hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), which has been \u200baccused by ministers of fueling the unrest, criticised plans to deploy troops onto the streets of Paris.
\n\u201cDemonstrators are not enemies within. The French government must not go to war against its own people,\u201d LFI\u2019s parliamentary group said in a statement.
\nProtests in other European countries, including Italy and Albania, have added to concerns that anger over living standards risks spreading \u200baround the continent at a time when many nations, including France, are struggling with \u200bbudget woes.
\nItaly approved a raft of security measures on Tuesday, including a new offence of violent participation in a demonstration and tougher penalties for rioters in response to the turbulence \u200blast weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yellow Vest activists seek to revive their campaign against rising living costs, declining public services paris France\u2019s Yellow Vest movement filed plans for a major \u200bmarch through Paris on Saturday, presenting the government with its next major test after riots and looting last weekend shook confidence \u200cin its ability to maintain order. Prime Minister Sebastien …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104705,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104676\/revisions\/104705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}