By Kerry Mitchell
Part 1 of 2
France has recently seen its most significant social unrest in decades, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets since November 17. The “gilets jaunes” or “yellow vests” protests, named for the reflective vests that vehicles in France are required to carry, ostensibly erupted from the planned imposition of a new fuel tax. Designed to push people toward greater use of public transportation and the purchase of more fuel-efficient, lower-emission vehicles, this tax formed part of the administration’s efforts to mitigate climate change by helping France meet its emissions targets as per the Paris Agreement. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to withdraw the planned tax and has offered other concessions, but protesters have indicated that their concerns are much broader than the single tax. They have called for Macron to resign among other more fundamental, wide-ranging reforms. While the protests have decreased in size from their original peak at around 300,000 people country-wide, they have also involved successively greater degrees of violence. Burned buildings and cars, looted shops, smashed windows, and general vandalism have accompanied the originally peaceful protests, as have battles between police and protesters. The ongoing protests, occurring predominantly on the weekends, have spread to six countries.
