PARIS: The French National Assembly on Friday approved a package of emergency concessions first announced by President Emmanuel Macron in a bid to end the violent “yellow vest” protests.
The tax cuts for low-income workers were put forward by Macron in a televised address earlier this month to help cool weeks of protests that brought major disruption to the country.
The measures provide a “quick, strong and concrete response” to the crisis, said the labor minister Muriel Penicaud in a debate which lasted into the early hours of Friday morning.
The measures include the removal of a planned tax increase for a majority of pensioners and tax-free overtime pay for all workers.
Economists estimate the cuts will cost up to 15 billion euros ($17 billion).
The concessions will now move to the Senate for approval.
Tens of thousands of people joined rallies across France on consecutive Saturdays in a movement which sprung up over fuel tax hikes but snowballed into broader opposition to Macron.
Police this week said they would start removing barricades at roundabouts and on motorways after the demonstrations began to run out of steam.
The protests, which at times spiralled into violence, took a toll on the economy, with businesses counting the cost of supply disruptions, smashed property and a dearth of shoppers and tourists who stayed away from city centers.
On Thursday the president told critics of the fuel tax hikes “you’re right” after 1.15 million people signed a petition suggesting several other ways to fight fossil fuel pollution.
Macron called the petition a “citizens’ act.”
“Your message, I heard it. I am responding to you directly, you are right,” Macron wrote on the website Change.org.
He reminded the petition signers that his government has canceled the planned increase in fuel tax and that no hikes in gas and electricity prices would be made during the winter.
While restating that reducing fossil fuels which contribute to climate change was a necessary action, Macron added that it “must not put the problems of the end of the world in opposition to the problems at the end of the month” — alluding to the anger of the “yellow vest” protest movement about the cost of living in France and the difficulty in making ends meet.
The number of people who have been killed during the “yellow vest” protests since they began in early November rose to nine on Thursday after a 60-year-old man was hit by a lorry at a demonstration next to a motorway near Agen in southwestern France.
French National Assembly approves ‘yellow vest’ tax cuts
French National Assembly approves ‘yellow vest’ tax cuts
- The tax cuts for low-income workers were put forward by Macron in a televised address earlier this month
- Economists estimate the cuts will cost up to 15 billion euros ($17 billion)
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
