Demonstrators demanded the resignation of Saint-Etienne Mayor Gaël Perdriau. The police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.
The mayor was indicted in April for "blackmail" for an intimate video compromising his former centrist deputy. The blackmail concerns the use of a sex tape shot in January 2015 in which we can see the centrist Gilles Artigues, his political rival, being massaged by a man in a hotel room in Paris. The municipal majority condemned this intrusion in a statement.