PARIS—Protests and strikes against unpopular pension reforms gripped France again Tuesday, with many thousands marching and the Eiffel Tower closed and police ramping up security amid government warnings that radical demonstrators intended “to destroy, to injure and to kill.”
Concerns that violence could mar the large demonstrations prompted what Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin described as an unprecedented deployment of 13,000 officers, nearly half of them concentrated in the French capital.
After months of upheaval, an exit from the firestorm of protest triggered by President Emmanuel Macron’s changes to France’s retirement system looked as far away as ever. Despite fresh union pleas that the government pause its hotly contested push to raise France’s legal retirement age from 62 to 64, Macron seemingly remained wedded to it….