French taxi drivers clash with riot police as they attempt to disrupt rush-hour traffic on the ring road around Paris on Tuesday | Cristophe Petit Tesson/EPA French PM calls for truce in taxi-Uber war At least 20 drivers arrested for violence during protests.

PARIS — French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that his government would seek to broker a truce between the taxi sector and Uber after police arrested at least 20 drivers accused of violence during protests against the app-based car service.

As protests continued, Valls said he would appoint a neutral mediator within 48 hours, reinforce controls on the practices of car-for-hire services and gather all industry participants for talks to seek long-term solutions.

The call for talks echoed a similar announcement made last summer, after a previous spate of violent protests. But that meeting never happened, because the government preferred to focus on refining rules governing the vehicle-for-hire industry, notably training.

With basic competition issues unresolved nearly a year later, furious taxi drivers took to the streets again, intent on pressuring the government into action against their unwanted competitors.

Last year’s protests focused on the low-cost UberPop service. This time taxi drivers demanded the banning of a car-hire service named Heetch, as well as a crackdown on Uber, whose drivers they say are breaking the law by scouting for customers on the street — normally the exclusive right of taxis.

Around Paris, some 1,200 taxi drivers set up roadblocks on major thoroughfares, blocked a tunnel and gathered en masse near the offices of Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron, who has defended Uber. Protests had caused more than 60 kilometers of traffic jams around Paris by mid-morning.

On the Périphérique ringroad around Paris, news footage showed drivers manning a roadblock made of burning tires and attacking cars that attempted to pass. Riot police then descended onto the road to make arrests.

Police told French media the drivers were arrested for violent behavior, carrying weapons and setting fires. The type of weapon was not specified.

€8 billion problem

Heetch’s founder said his firm is not illegal and would keep operating.

A spokesman for Uber said its drivers were not breaking the law, and called on the French government to address the root causes of a conflict between Uber and the regulated taxi sector.

Hollande is yet again caught between conflicting interests: appeasing the taxi profession, which has demonstrated the power to disrupt daily life; and showing a modern face by letting Uber and other services operate freely and create jobs.

On one side of the debate is Macron, the 38-year-old who has praised Uber for hiring thousands of drivers with migrant backgrounds. A source in his office told POLITICO that Macron still advocated talks to address the underlying issue — which is that most taxi drivers have gone into debt to acquire expensive licenses.

“Our belief is that there is room for two in a market which is growing and which is linked to tourism,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “It’s also part of a broader trend: Fewer people are driving their own cars in Paris, and there is a lack of drivers overall.”

On the other side is Cazeneuve, whose interior ministry has consistently sided with taxi drivers and their employers while doing nothing to regulate the opaque license market, with a taxi license in Paris selling for as much as €240,000.

So far, the interior ministry is winning.

Uber under cover

Early on Tuesday, Uber’s app-based service showed “no cars available,” but appeared to be operating normally at midday.

After anti-Uber protests last summer turned violent, Uber advised drivers in an email this week to avoid “tension points” around Paris, including the Orly and Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle international airports.

A source close to the firm said some drivers would hide identifying badges so they could keep working, while others planned to stay home to steer clear of any clashes. A common fear: getting stopped at a roadblock by taxi drivers, hauled out of the car and beaten by the roadside.

Heetch’s founder Teddy Pellerin has proposed a blanket solution that would flatten the playing field between indebted taxi drivers and debt-free ride-sharing drivers: buying up all the licenses.

In an article in the French Huffington Post, Pellerin proposed imposing a tiny fee on each ride that would feed into a “digital transition fund” designed to buy the licenses, whose total cost is estimated at around €8 billion.

The government is not interested. The purchase operation would be hard to regulate, given the opacity of the market. And it would penalize younger drivers, who paid more for their licenses than older drivers. But most of all, it would deprive the state of income, since license sales are taxed.