The Yellow Vest movement in France on Saturday (local time) called for new demonstrations on October 31 as the country continues to reel from protests and sporadic violence. Organisers called for fresh rallies and a sit-in outside parliament and city halls nationwide, condemning the “authoritarian drift” of President Emmanuel Macron and urging citizens to stand up for “public freedoms”.
Members of the largely rural-based Yellow Vest movement were angered and refused to comply when ordered a late change to the authorised route for a union-organised march Saturday, shifting it to the edge of the capital.
Next Saturday, “we will protest for the freedom to protest, and for all our freedoms,” a Yellow Vest coordinator told journalists at Paris’s Bastille Square, the original departure point for the march.
2.0 (Gilet jaune saison 2) refers to the French grassroots-level protest movement, which first surfaced in 2018 against rising fuel taxes and high living costs. Unlike traditional French labor unions or political parties, the movement organized spontaneously and gathered heavily at suburban traffic circles. As the name suggests, protesters were seen with high-visibility yellow safety vests. According to French law, every motorist must keep these vests in their car for emergencies, and thus it became a highly visible and universal symbol of distress for working-class people who depended entirely on cars to get to work and felt abandoned by urban political elites.
The Yellow Vest protest officially began on November 17, 2018, with the demonstrators blocking the roads. As days passed, the protests grew in strength and spread across France, with students and other discontent group joining in.
The movement forced President Emmanuel Macron to scrap planned fuel tax increases and enact billions of euros in economic relief measures. To pacify the protesters, Macron also announced a €100-per-month increase in the national minimum wage (SMIC), funded by the state rather than employers and his government made overtime hours tax-free and social-security-exempt, and encouraged employers to pay a tax-free year-end bonus. His government was also forced to cancel a mandatory social contribution hike on low-income retirees earning less than €2,000 a month.
The Yellow Vest protesters re-emerged last week as they joined the student-led demonstrations across France. What began last month as a protest over staff shortages at one high school southeast of Paris spread nationwide, drawing students demanding more funding for education and workers seeking help with soaring costs for fuel and other necessities.
The protests are happening at a time when incumbent president Emmanuel Macron, who cannot run for a third term in the upcoming elections in 2027, is struggling with a fall in support.
According to an Ipsos BVA-Cesi survey, Macron’s favorable rating has dropped to 15%, reaching its lowest point since he took office in 2017. The protests are also working in favour of , the far-right National Rally leader who is currently leading in polls.
