Some 540 held at French anti-austerity protests as new PM sworn in

Anti-austerity demonstrations in France attracted some 200,000 participants and resulted in around 540 arrests on Wednesday, said the French Interior Ministry, while the new Prime Minister of the country took office in the midst of a serious political crisis.

Sébastien Lecornu called for a change of policy as he was sworn in, warning the transfer of power to Paris that there must be ruptures, not only in the form, not only in the method, but also in the content “.

Lecornu succeeds François Bayrou, who resigned Tuesday after losing a vote of trust in the National Assembly on his austerity budgetary plans.

The proposals and the anger of the public with the deeply unpopular president Emmanuel Macron caused a wave of demonstrations Wednesday under the slogan “Block Everything”, with scenes becoming violent in various parts of the country.

The origins of the decentralized movement are not clear, but its anti-austerity program has been adopted by left parties, unions and supporters of yellow vests demonstrations, which shook France in 2018.

The CGT Union said that up to a quarter of a million people had joined the demonstrations on Wednesday.

The Interior Ministry said late Wednesday that 23 security forces had been injured and more than 540 detained people, including 211 in Paris.

The demonstrations increased in size during the day, with many participating radical activists.

There have been many fires in the public streets and “disturbances of public order,” said the ministry, while the demonstrators tried to ensure the Gare du Nord station in Paris.

A fire broke out on a building facade in the capital, while a large shopping center in the city center has been closed due to the heated atmosphere.

The videos have shown violent clashes, while demonstrators set up blockages in secondary schools, bus deposits and streets in cities like Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux and Toulouse.

The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, said that the movement was not an initiative of citizens and that he had been taken up by extremists from the far left.

The situation was particularly tense in Paris and in the cities of Nantes in the west and in Rennes in the northwest of the country, where there were attacks on the security forces, added the ministry.

Lecornu promises “creative” solutions

The national demonstrations were a clear signal of the dissatisfaction of the public with the management of France, which underwent a period of flow since Macron qualified the parliamentary elections of Snap last summer and failed to approach an imminent budgetary emergency.

The new Prime Minister, who was appointed Tuesday by President Emmanuel Macron, said that he wanted to meet party and unions representatives in the coming days.

Lecornu – who previously was Minister of Defense and is considered a close ally of the President – is confronted with the difficult task of finding majorities in the National Assembly, which is divided between the Macron centrist camp, the national rally of the far right of Marine Le Pen and the left parts.

Nevertheless, Lecornu has promised the French population: “We are going to do it”, adding that there was “no impossible path”.

His comments were notably brief due to the demonstrations. “This instability and the political and parliamentary crisis that we know the call for humility and sobriety,” he said.

However, he said that the gap between citizens’ expectations and the political situation should be closed.

“To do this, we will also have to change, to be more creative, sometimes more technical, more serious in the way we work with our opponents,” said the 39 -year -old.