France news: Violence erupts on the streets of Paris – Macron called to act | World | News


Violence sparked on January 26 after a group of left-wing students clashed with others from a right-wing group named La Cocarde. Although La Cocarde joined the protest in order to demand the reopening of universities in a unified front, left-wing members attacked the rival group. At the call of the UNEF student union, La Cocarde joined the march towards the Ministry of Education but were attacked by Antifa group causing three to be injured.

The clash was condemned by French MEPs while a student of the La Cocarde group hit out at the Antifa activists.

They said: “When it comes to the general interest and the common good, the extreme left hears nothing, and it ‘anti-fascism’ condemns them to ineffectiveness.”

Such was the violence witnessed in the capital the MEPs called on Mr Macron’s Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin to take action.

One MEP, Jordan Bardella said: “And these extreme left-wing groups who come armed to demonstrations to make violence reign against those who do not think like them will you continue to leave them unpunished.”

Sebastien Chenu said: “Once again, the far left uses violence with impunity.”

This month, Mr Macron introduced a curfew in France between 6am to 6pm.

Despite introducing the curfew, schools remained open while the President made the decision to keep universities closed, thus sparking the clashes.

Although certain restrictions have been brought in, there are now fears in France that a third lockdown may be called.

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The UK’s average was 10.79 on January 25 while the Government has also reported 311,060 today taking the overall total to 7,164,387.

France’s low vaccination rate will not be helped by the supply chain issues affecting the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccines.

In a further blow to France, it’s prestigious Pasteur Institute has announced that it will abandon its drug after reporting disappointing results.

France’s other producer, Sanofi has announced its vaccine will now not be ready until the end of the year.

Due to this, it will now help to produce the Pfizer vaccine in order to help the EU’s rollout.

The company’s chief executive, Paul Hudson, told Le Figaro: “As we’re a few months behind on our main vaccine we asked ourselves how we could be useful now, how we could also participate in the collective effort to end this crisis as quickly as possible.

“We studied different possible options and we approached Pfizer/BioNTech and signed an agreement with them on Tuesday.”

Additional reporting by Maria Ortega.



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