Block Everything: 'Protests peaceful so far in central Paris'

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00:00French Interior Minister Brunard Retailhaut says around 200 people have been arrested in protests across France.

00:07The Bloc Everything protest, led by left-wing activists, is causing disruption to transport, schools and other services.

00:14Some 80,000 police have been deployed to handle the protests.

00:18The demonstrators do not have a single one grievance,

00:21but the budget that Emmanuel Macron is trying to force through Parliament is one particularly contentious issue

00:27with opposition parties and left-wing groups.

00:30France 24's Antonia Kerrigan is at one of the protests in Paris.

00:35Good afternoon, Antonia. Can you tell me how the protests have been where you are today?

00:43So I'm at Place du Châtelet in central Paris.

00:46It's one of the authorised protests rather than one of the underground, organised, spontaneous protests, if you will,

00:54with a huge trade union presence.

00:56At the outset, but gradually, the gathering has been growing as roadblocks and smaller gatherings

01:04have been dispersed by police elsewhere in the city.

01:07I would say there are more than 1,000 people on this square behind me, and it's filling up fast.

01:12Groups of people have arrived, some of them in protest formation,

01:16brandishing flares, brandishing placards, excuse me, chanting,

01:24we're here, we're here, whether Macron likes it or not, we're here,

01:28or brandishing commentary on their placards about whether, be it François Bayroux or Sébastien Lecornu, the prime minister,

01:36the struggle continues, was the wording on one of the placards or on several of them.

01:40Now, as you say, the Ministry of the Interior have announced arrest figures,

01:43recently reached nearly 300, just over half of them in Paris.

01:49Here, it is fairly peaceful from everything we've seen.

01:52CRS riot police are positioned at every point of arrival at Place du Châtelet,

01:58and we have also seen Brave M officers, that's plainclothes police officers,

02:04mounted on motorbikes, circling.

02:06But we're yet to see any particular interaction between police and protesters,

02:11or anything we could call tension for now here at Place du Châtelet.

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