French pension protests: Paris airport traffic disrupted as rat-catchers hurl corpses of rodents at City Hall

Protesters disrupted traffic at Paris’s main airport and gathered again in their thousands in other French cities on Thursday, in another round of demonstrations calling for President Emmanuel Macron to scrap pension reforms.

Around 100 demonstrators blocked a road leading to terminal one on Thursday and entered the terminal building at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Flights were unaffected, but travellers with their luggage had to weave their way past flag-waving protesters.

The protests come amid plans from President Macron to raise the national retirement age from 62 to 64 which have infuriated many across the country.

Protestors take part in the 11th day of action after the government pushed a pensions reform through parliament without a vote, using the article 49.3 of the constitution, in Paris on April 6, 2023.

In Paris, rat-catchers hurled the corpses of rodents at City Hall. Broadcaster BFM-TV showed the rodents’ corpses being thrown by workers in white protective suits.

Natacha Pommet, a leader of the public services branch of the CGT trade union, said on Thursday that Paris’s rat-catchers wanted “to show the hard reality of their mission” and that fury with Mr Macron’s pension reforms is morphing into a wider movement of workers expressing grievances over salaries and other issues.

“All this anger brings together all types of anger,” she said.

Ten previous rounds of nationwide strikes and protests since January have failed to get Mr Macron to change course, and there was no sign from his government that Thursday’s 11th round of upheaval would make it back down.

Talks between trade union leaders and prime minister Elisabeth Borne quickly broke up on Wednesday with no breakthrough, setting the stage for protesters to return to the streets.

Crowds marched behind union flags and banners in Marseille on the Mediterranean coast, Bordeaux in the south west, Lyon in the south east and other cities.

In Paris, strikers again closed the Eiffel Tower.

In the western city of Nantes, rumbling tractors joined the parade of marchers and thick clouds of police tear gas were deployed against demonstrators.

Public radio France Bleu reported that police tear gas also was fired to disperse demonstrators in the Brittany city of Rennes.

It’s “a deep anger, a cold anger”, said Sophie Binet, the newly elected general secretary of the CGT union.

She described Mr Macron’s government as “completely disconnected from the country and completely bunkerised in its ministries”.