A speech by French President Emmanuel Macron was interrupted Tuesday in the Netherlands by protesters attacking him on the state of democracy in France.
“I think we lost something; where is French democracy?” shouted one male protester at the beginning of a speech by the French president on European sovereignty at the Nexus Institute in The Hague. Another yelled, “Why did you bypass [the] French parliament?” in reference to the political crisis that has emerged over the president’s flagship pensions reform in France.
Macron responded with, “Do you allow me to answer?” and turned toward the protesters, who continued to heckle him over his green track record and held a banner saying, “President of violence and hypocrisy.”
France has been gripped by a deepening political crisis since the French president authorized the use of a constitutional maneuver to bypass a vote in the French parliament over his plans to increase the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62. Scenes of chaos and disruption have marked weekly protests and strikes in France amid allegations of violence against French security forces.
After the incident, Macron resumed his speech, saying that “this is democracy, because it is a place where you can … have such incidents,” as opposed to other authoritarian regimes in the world.
