Protesters blocked roads, set fires and clashed with police in Paris and other French cities on Wednesday, piling pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and testing new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on his first day in office.
France’s Interior Ministry said 250 people were arrested in the early hours of the nationwide demonstrations, called against budget cuts and other grievances.
Despite a massive deployment of 80,000 police, protesters created widespread disruptions. In Rennes, a bus was torched, while fire damage to electrical cables in the southwest halted one train line and disrupted another, authorities said.
The “Block Everything” movement, which spread online over the summer, urged citizens to strike, march and obstruct traffic. Although the call fell short of completely shutting down the country, protests spread from Marseille in the south to Lille and Caen in the north, and from Nantes and Rennes in the west to Lyon and Grenoble in the southeast.
Paris police reported 159 arrests by noon, with protesters attempting to block the city’s beltway and hurling objects at officers. Nearly 100 others were detained in other regions.
The unrest comes after the collapse of Macron’s previous government on Monday, when then-Prime Minister François Bayrou lost a parliamentary confidence vote. Lecornu, sworn in Tuesday, now faces a turbulent political climate marked by growing anger over spending cuts.
Protesters said they were defending public services against privatization and accused Macron’s government of ignoring ordinary people’s struggles. Some warned the anger could grow into a wider social movement, recalling the “Yellow Vest” protests of 2018–2019.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau accused far-left groups of hijacking the demonstrations and seeking violent confrontations with police. He said small organized groups dressed in black were responsible for much of the unrest.
Macron’s minority government has faced repeated waves of protests in recent years — from pension reform anger in 2022 to riots in 2023 following a police shooting of a teenager. The latest unrest signals further instability for Lecornu’s new government.