After going missing for several days, French President Emmanuel Macron has moved to quell the Yellow Vest riots that have been sweeping France by donning make-up, going on television, and fluttering his eyelashes at the nation.





The television address, which was the first time Macron had addressed the public since the 1st of December when the protests turned into riots in Paris, was an attempt to bring peace and unity to the country with "concessions" to the demonstrators.





However, critics have said that the measures Macron announced were purely "cosmetic," like him.





New Statesman: As reported by the





He promised an additional €100 for workers on the minimum wage “without it costing a cent to employers” – because it’s not a new increase, merely the re-evaluation of a specific allowance that was already planned. (Le Parisien has calculated that the levelled system will negatively impact around 30,000 of the most precarious households.) He said that a tax on pensioners “earning less than €2,000” would be cancelled – without making clear that “€2,000” included all earnings, not solely their pension, and would therefore impact fewer people than his rhetoric implied. He announced an annual tax-free bonus for workers – “whose employers can afford it”, so at a boss’s discretion. Mere hours before Macron’s speech, the Senate also adopted a freeze on welfare payments for 2019. Macron is a rather like a sneaky character in a Disney film: if you don’t negotiate precise terms in the contract, chances are you’re losing out in the agreement as a whole.



But the real problem lies in plain sight: Macron still refuses to re-introduce the tax on the very rich, which he abolished early in his presidency, a measure that has earned him the stubborn nickname of “president of the rich”. “Going backwards would weaken us,” Macron said about reintroducing the tax, which the gilets jaunes have demanded in the name of economic justice. According to Macron, the tax, known as l’impôt de solidarité sur la fortune the (solidarity tax on wealth), made rich citizens flee. That is “completely false”, according to Thomas Piketty, the economist and author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, who noted in Le Monde that the tax continually brought in more money from 1990 until its abolition in 2017. Macron must reinstate the tax, Piketty concluded, “if he wants to save his presidency”.





He also failed to give in to the demonstrators demands on immigration.





document released by the Yellow Jacket movement, the demonstrators demanded the following: In areleased by the Yellow Jacket movement, the demonstrators demanded the following:





- That the causes of forced migration are treated.



- That asylum seekers are well treated. We owe them housing, security, food and education for the miners. Work with the UN to have host camps open in many countries around the world, pending the outcome of the asylum application.



- That the unsuccessful asylum seekers be returned to their country of origin.



- That a real integration policy be implemented. Living in France means becoming French (French language course, History of France course and civic education course with certification at the end of the course).



