France and the UK have postponed the highly symbolic state visit of King Charles III, which had been set to begin on Sunday, because of the gathering protest movement against president Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age.
The Élysée Palace said Macron and the King had spoken by phone about the visit that had been due to run from Sunday to Wednesday and include an ornate dinner at the Versailles Palace and a trip to Bordeaux.
“The visit will be rescheduled as soon as possible,” said the Élysée.
Buckingham Palace, the UK royals’ official residence, confirmed that the visit by the King and his wife Camilla, Queen Consort, had been “postponed”. “Their majesties greatly look forward to the opportunity to visit France as soon as dates can be found,” the palace said.
The planned trip’s second leg, a visit to Germany, is expected to go ahead.
The UK prime minister’s office said: “This decision was taken with the consent of all parties after the president of France asked the British government to postpone the visit.”
In France, unions have called for another nationwide day of marches on Tuesday. French and British officials had in recent days been considering changes to the logistics and details of the visit to salvage what was meant to be King Charles’s first trip abroad as monarch and symbolise warming relations between the two countries after years of Brexit-related tensions.
But they were prompted to delay the visit by chaotic scenes in Paris and elsewhere on Thursday after labour unions held demonstrations that attracted more than 1mn people.
Only days before the King was meant to visit the south-western city of Bordeaux, unidentified people set the wooden doors of the town hall ablaze on Thursday, in a striking image of the violent edge to some of the protests.
The King had also been due to dine in the ornate Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and attend a parade on the Champs-Élysées with 140 horse-mounted Republican guards.
Scrapping the King’s visit is a setback for Macron who has staked his reformist credentials in his second term on raising the retirement age.
He has long argued that pension reform was necessary to ensure the viability of France’s pension system as the population ages. If finalised, the plan will raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, and require people to work for 43 years to receive a full pension.
On Thursday, more than 1mn people protested across France in demonstrations that were largely peaceful until nightfall, when small groups clashed with police and set fires to the tonnes of uncollected rubbish that has accumulated because of strikes.
About 900 fires were set in Paris alone and 457 arrests made nationally, according to the interior ministry.
The protest movement has become more unpredictable since Macron’s government chose this month to push through the pensions law without a parliamentary vote, using the 49.3 clause in the French constitution. The government survived no-confidence votes on Monday following that decision, but public anger has continued to fester.
Labour unions, which have largely controlled nationwide protests since January, are now struggling to keep a lid on more radical activists, including a small hardcore of anarchists and thugs known as casseurs in French who often join big protests.
Bordeaux’s mayor Pierre Hurmic expressed “pain, shock and indignation” at the huge blaze that engulfed the wooden doors of the 18th-century Palais Rohan that houses the town hall.
Asked ahead of the delay to King Charles’s visit whether the monarch should still come to Bordeaux, he said cancelling would amount to handing a victory to “thugs” and that changes had already been made to the itinerary to ensure security.
“The city of Bordeaux is still ready and motivated to host the visit of the King of England,” he said on France Info television.
France had been planning to deploy 4,000 police officers to secure the King’s visit.
Macron’s political opponents had decried the visit and its symbolism, however. “Incredible — we’re going to have Macron, the republican monarch, welcoming Charles III, going down the Champs-Élysées, and they’re going to go and dine at Versailles while people are protesting in the streets,” said Sandrine Rousseau, a member of parliament for the Green party, on BFM TV.
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