An unexpectedly large crowd of 1 million people crammed on to the Champs-Élysées to celebrate the start of 2023, after two years of Covid cancellations – with Paris officials calling it a “renaissance” in people wanting to get together again and a taster for future big gatherings for the 2024 Olympics.
French authorities had expected about 500,000 Parisians and tourists to flock to the avenue, where a vast display of 340kg of fireworks was set off around the Arc de Triomphe at midnight during a special musical medley.
But a staggering 1 million people from Paris, across France and tourists from as far as the US and Australia turned out to cram themselves tightly into a dense, mask-free crowd on the avenue, amid high policing. The crowd was evacuated shortly after the fireworks ended after midnight.
The last Paris new year’s gathering on the Champs-Élysées took place on 31 December 2019, with 250,000 people present. In 2020, it was cancelled amid Covid restrictions. Last year’s gathering was called off to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant.
“It was almost 2 million people if you take the wider perimeter,” said the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin. “It went off as well as it could have done.”
Ninety thousand police were deployed across France for the new year celebrations. Darmanin said on Sunday there had been 490 arrests across the country, up on 441 the previous year. An interior ministry statement added that there had been a “historic” drop in the number of vehicles torched, with 690 cars set alight this year, down on 872 in 2021. In recent years, car-burnings on New Year’s Eve had become a major focus for police.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, used his televised new year address to assert that 2023 would be the moment for his pension overhaul – a key, and controversial, plank of his election platform. Macron’s first push to overhaul pensions prompted weeks of protests and transport strikes in 2019, shortly before the pandemic hit and the changes were put on hold.
In the next few weeks, the French government is expected to announce how it plans to raise the retirement age – with a package of changes to pensions that could trigger clashes in the national assembly, street protests and strikes.
“We need to work longer,” Macron said. He did not give details of his pensions changes, nor his promised overhaul of the immigration system expected to go before parliament soon. He said both were necessary moves in difficult times, calling for “unity, audacity and collective ambition in France in 2023”.
