Unrelenting Yellow Vest activists have marched in Paris and other French cities for the 24th straight weekend, just days after Emmanuel Macron tried to placate the protest movement with promises of lower taxes.
The demonstrators who assembled in Paris, Toulouse and Strasbourg on Saturday appear to signal that despite the French president’s recent concessions to the group, the Yellow Vest movement is alive and well.
Oh Thursday, Macron held the first major press conference of his two-year presidency, in which he announced that he wanted to implement “significant” income tax cuts. The televised conference, however, was not well received among those who have turned out week after week to demonstrate against Macron’s business-friendly austerity measures.
Plusieurs centaines de #GiletsJaunes et militants CGT en route pour l'#acte24 dans Paris pic.twitter.com/xrrisLgSOl— Jonathan Moadab (@Moadab_RTfr) April 27, 2019
AFP, after interviewing a dozen Yellow Vests in the south of France about their opinion of the press conference, reported that activists thought Macron’s olive branch was “rubbish.”
Jérémy Clément, regularly cited as a spokesperson for the movement, told the news agency that “the President has understood our claims, but he hasn't provided the answers to them.”
Macron has already offered €10 billion ($11.1bn) in tax cuts and income subsidies for the working poor and pensioners, back in December, but the pledge did not slow down the burgeoning protest movement.
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