The wave of protests places Le Pen and Mélenchon at the forefront in voting intentions in France

The Government asks all political forces to condemn violence "without buts"

MADRID, 26 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The National Union party of the far-right Marine Le Pen and the left-wing coalition New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES) would be the two formations with the most votes in possible early elections with 26 percent support each.

Both formations would thus benefit from the recent wave of protests against the pension reform with an increase of 5 points since November in the case of Unión Nacional and of one in the case of NUPES, according to an Ifop survey published by 'Le Journal du Dimanche'.

"The great lesson is that the National Union is in the lead. It is something unprecedented. It has a wild card electoral base. There are almost no categories in which it is very weak," explained the managing director of Ifop, Frédéric Dabi.

The big losers would thus be the parties that support the majority of President Emmanuel Macron, since Macron's own Renaissance coalition would fall to third place (22 percent, 5 points less). The traditional party of the French right, The Republicans, also fell, although only one point, which went from 11 to 10 percent of voting intentions.

"In this survey there is a loser and it is the current majority. If there were a vote, the punishment would be very clear," Dabi stressed.

The study is based on 1,094 interviews with people aged 18 or over, representative of the French population, conducted between March 20 and 21, 2023.

One of the main causes of the fall in popularity of the parties that support Macron is the pension reform that raises the retirement age and is supported by both the presidential majority parties and the Republicans, although with nuances.

This same Sunday, the government spokesman, Olivier Véran, called on all political forces to condemn the violence in the recent protests, in reference to the serious riots on Thursday on the last day of the general strike against the reform.

"Violence must be condemned unreservedly, without a 'yes, but'. Obviously I am not confusing the demonstrations in recent weeks organized by the unions, the families who continued to march on Thursday and the rebels who have come to sow chaos in the country ", Veran pointed out.

The government spokesman acknowledged that "for twenty years we have seen an increase in the use of violence in major moments of social protest."

"This phenomenon is not exclusive to (protests over the pension reform). Look at the violent ultra-left groups in Sainte-Soline," he pointed out, referring to the agrarian town in central-western France that on Saturday experienced a real battle campaign between police and ecologist militants who tried to occupy an agricultural reservoir and which resulted in 200 injuries. "Nor is it the prerogative of France. Recently, abroad, there have been attacks against the institutions," she pointed out.

"We must prevent violence from migrating tomorrow from the margins of the demonstrations to the center. To do this, I ask for a strong speech from all political forces to affirm that it has no place in society," he argued.

Thus, he has openly pointed out the leaders of the far right and of the left, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for their "ambiguity". "There is a continuity between the violence of political discourse and the violence expressed on the street," she reproached.

Meanwhile, the response to the police response to the protests continues. Thus, on Thursday a petition was registered on the web platform of the National Assembly calling for the dissolution of the riot unit Motorized Brigades for the Repression of Violent Actions (BRAV-M), which has already collected 28,615 signatures. 500,000 are needed for the petition to be debated in the House.

"The country is suffocating from the violent and brutal abuses committed by these motorized brigades against protesters who are trying to express their opposition to a project of social regression," the petition states.

"We are on the side of the social anger of the protesters and not of the flash-balls, grenades, batons and traps," he adds. Three deputies from La Francia Insumisa (NUPES) had already requested on Wednesday the provisional suspension of the activities of the BRAV-M.

The petition has grown after the publication on Friday in the press of a leaked recording in which police officers from the unit insulted and humiliated seven young protesters whom they had just arrested.

The BRAV-M were created in 2019 by the prefect of the Paris Police, Didier Lallement, in response to the protests of the "yellow vests".