PARIS: Workers in
Paris swept up broken glass and towed away burnt-out cars on Sunday after the latest "
yellow vest" riots, while the government warned of slower economic growth and said that President
Emmanuel Macron would address the nation this week.
"You won't make it past Christmas, Emmanuel," read the graffiti on a boarded-up shop near the Champs Elysees boulevard. Macron, elected in May 2017, is facing mounting criticism for not speaking in public in more than a week as violence worsened.
On Saturday, the
Eiffel Tower and several museums closed their doors for security reasons, as did top Paris department stores on what should have been a prime shopping weekend.
The protest movement will have "a severe impact" on the French economy, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Reuters on Sunday as he toured an upmarket central Paris neighbourhood that had seen heavy looting Saturday night.
In the middle of last month, before the protests, the central bank forecast 0.4% fourth-quarter growth. Economists said then that the economy would need to grow at 0.8% in the final three months to hit the government's 1.7% annual growth forecast.