France is expected to see massive May Day protests on Sunday as demonstrators on both sides of the political spectrum – but especially on the left – are expected to vent their anger over President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election. FRANCE 24 takes a look back at the history of May 1 as International Workers’ Day, a day of protests, parades and an annual challenge to the status quo.
Fresh off a presidential election and now headed into a legislative contest set for June, French politics finds itself in a paradoxical state. There is a certain public admiration for Emmanuel Macron, the centrist upstart who became France's youngest-ever president in 2017 and then shifted to the right along with the centre ground of the French electorate. Macron easily secured re-election by winning the first round of the vote, when the French had a wide variety of candidates to choose from (12 in this election), before comfortably beating nationalist Marine Le Pen in a late-April run-off.
