French strikes threaten to blight start of Euro 2016

The French government is struggling to end ongoing transport and rubbish collection strikes that threaten to blight the start of the Euro 2016 football tournament on Friday.

Bins were overflowing and rubbish piled up along pavements in half of Paris neighbourhoods and in the southern port city of Marseille on Thursday after several days of rolling strikes at treatment plants that form part of the hardline CGT union’s protests against the government’s proposals to loosen France’s rigid labour protections.

Around 2 million foreign visitors are expected to attend the month-long football championship, which will take place in stadiums across France.

The CGT is continuing to protest against François Hollande’s proposals to loosen labour rules on issues including hiring and firing, which first led to oil refinery strikes, fuel depot blockades and stoppages at nuclear sites in recent weeks.

Three refineries remain on strike, though petrol supplies have returned to normal. The union, however, is now targeting waste collection and processing centres, particularly outside Paris and Marseille.

Two key sites in the Paris area are currently blocked by rolling CGT action, and strikers have also blocked garages for collection in the capital. Ten of Paris’s 20 arrondissements now have rubbish mounting on the streets.

After Paris city hall called for an end to the strikes, police intervened on Wednesday to free access to two of the city’s bin-lorry garages, but strikers then voted to continue their stoppages.

The waste incineration plant at Fos-sur Mer, near Marseille, is also blocked. In Saint-Étienne, which hosts the Portugal-Iceland match on Tuesday, collection resumed on Thursday after the city said it may not be able to open its fan zone for supporters if the collection strikes continued.

The government was also working to reach a deal to end a parallel open-ended strike about working conditions in the state SNCF rail company, which is now in its ninth day. Rail disruption in some areas continues, with around half of local trains running and 80% of high-speed TGV trains.

Air France pilots are to go ahead with a four-day strike over their working conditions, starting on Saturday. The spectre of a pilots’ strike during a major sporting fixture in France is not new. In the run-up to France hosting the 1998 World Cup, Air France was paralysed by strike action for 10 days until it reached a last-minute deal with workers on the day the championship opened.

Workers, many of them from the CGT, also briefly blockaded France’s largest wholesale food market south of Paris on Thursday.

The union has said it does not seek to disrupt Euro 2016, but would stand firm until the withdrawal of Hollande’s proposed changes to labour law, which it said were a betrayal of workers’ rights.

“People want things to return to normal, for the mess to end,” the environment minister, Ségolène Royal, told the iTele TV station, saying it was “not right for a modern country to continue being permanently disrupted”.

“France’s pride is at stake. Let’s not harm France’s capacity to organise global events,” she said.

The sports minister, Patrick Kanner, accused the CGT and Sud unions of “guerrilla” tactics. “They’re spoiling the party. In spoiling the party, they’re spoiling the image of France,” he told France Inter radio.