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Yellow vests in France: Has a year of protests changed the country?

2019-11-17T09:13:55.141Z


In the capital, in the province, at roundabouts, in front of supermarkets: For a year the yellow vests are demonstrating in France. How did the protests change the country?



In the middle of the Indian Ocean, on the French island of La Réunion, the yellow vests for a year protest particularly stubbornly. Right there, French President Emmanuel Macron said on a visit three weeks ago: "It's normal that there is still this anger, because things take time." It could not happen "in a month".

Might be. But a lot has happened in the past twelve months. On November 17, 2018, the yellow vests in France protested for the first time. Until then, such a vest was a garment in traffic that cyclists often used.

Today, Yellow Westers are the avant-garde of a new working-class movement of the underprivileged in the western democracies, which almost brought down the president in France. By now it's almost forgotten how bad Macron was at the beginning of the year.

No one saw on 17 November last year the great uprising of the underprivileged come. Already Heinrich Heine had noticed that revolts happen in France without announcement. He saw then, 1832, the first uprisings of the labor movement. Did a similar historic new beginning occur in autumn 2018?

Kick-off with 300,000 people

The revolutionary leaflet of yesteryear was now the tweet or Facebook entry. So a French truck driver named Éric Drouet led the movement with a few others - on November 17, 2018, there were nearly 300,000 people. Guys like the full-bearded, burschikose Drouet: women and men, proletarian, unpolished and loud.

Previously, they had been completely unknown to the public. But it quickly turned out that they were majority. In the first surveys, the yellow vests received support from more than two-thirds of the French population. Suddenly, in the opinion of most observers, Macron was the only one to appear alone. Every weekend, people gathered outside supermarkets and roundabouts, where many cars drive in the French province.

JOEL SAGET / AFP

Tricolor and yellow vest: French combination

Even in the large roundabout around the triumphal arch in Paris, the cars did not continue. There the yellow vests plundered even in December the museum in the catacombs of the monument. Mass rallies of yellow vests took place in the capital, as in 1832 burned the street barricades, again and again there were riots. At the latest it was clear that the yellow vests are not a temporary phenomenon, that their protest would change France.

To this day, the yellow vests pull every weekend through Paris and other French cities. They have become less, seem like decimated to some hundreds. The police have become accustomed to them and drive them like cattle herds through the inner cities. But her threat remains.

The next showdown is coming up

"The government is afraid of the people," says the secretive French opposition leader Marine Le Pen, who sits in the Paris National Assembly with only a handful of members of their right-wing extremist party Rassemblement National (RN). According to polls, Le Pen will have 2022 chances to win against Macron in the next presidential election.

Also in this is now the threat of yellow vests. Even if they are giving a rather miserable picture on the streets at the moment, they could possibly tilt the majority as a new power in elections.

The government does not want to accept it. It reinforces "its calls for dialogue out of concern for a possible merger between strikers and yellow vests," it said recently in the left-liberal Paris "Le Monde". Macron's respect - some say fear - from the yellow vests has not diminished.

More at SPIEGEL +

Julien Daniel / THE MIRROR Nurse and Yellow-West Icon Your anger is still there

It was his biggest feat at the top of the country so far, lifting the protest from January to April with a three-month, almost uninterrupted Townhall debating tour across France. Whether in the circle of village mayors, young people or the dissatisfied citizens of the Parisian suburbs: Macron often discussed up to eight hours at a stretch, apart from small snacks. And he actually took the people's anger.

Almost all the critics spoke in these rounds, yet everything was civilized, in mutual respect and in the search for compromises and solutions. A lesson for democratic practices. Macron's poll ratings improved and his party performed surprisingly well in the European elections in May.

But are anger and protest therefore defeated? As early as 5 December, a number of unions want to strike against Macron's pension reform. Then the next social showdown in France is coming up. Then you should see exactly how much the yellow vests have changed the country.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-11-17

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