At least 21 arrested in the French Cup final, scene of protests against Macron

29 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

At least 21 people have been arrested in the final of the French men’s soccer Cup, the scene of protests against the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the increase in the retirement age called for this Saturday, coinciding with the presence of the president in the Stade de France in Paris.

The authorities have reported these arrests motivated by deliberate violence, theft and for using smoke bombs, according to French television BFMTV.

Macron was present at the meeting between the Toulouse and Nantes teams and greeted the players as usual, although he did so in the corridors of the stadium and not on the pitch, as has happened on other occasions, to avoid the controversy.

The final has been chosen by the unions to ask attendees to show Macron a symbolic red card for the law that raises the retirement age from 82 to 84 years. The authorities announced that access to the state with red cards distributed by the inter-union and that include the slogan “No to retirement at 64” would be prohibited.

Security guards have seized the cards despite the decision of the Paris Administrative Court to suspend the ban on access with them.

However, various French media have confirmed that there have been red cards present in the state despite the controls and that they have been shown at minute 49, in reference to article 49.3 that the Government used to facilitate the approval of the reform of the pensions.

“The president sends his prefects to chase whistles. He puts grids with pikes in the stadiums. He secretly greets the players. All this to hide the obvious: his clique is hated,” opposition deputy François Ruffin said on Twitter. “More than ever, they are unfortunate,” he stressed.

“Either he lied, or he does not control anything. In both cases, it is serious,” said the coordinator of La Francia Insumisa, Manuel Bompard, in response to the statements this Saturday by the police prefect, Laurent Núñez, who he said that people would not be prevented from entering the stadium with a red card.

Some 3,000 police and gendarmes and 1,400 security guards have been mobilized to guarantee security to try to avoid a fiasco like the one in the 2022 Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.

The Police Prefecture has established a “protection perimeter” around the Stade de France with “filtering devices and controls provided by the organizers, in particular to prevent the introduction of any dangerous object or prohibited by the regulations of the French Federation of Soccer”.