Is it true that after the adoption of the pension reform they threw an egg at Macron?

In mid-April 2023, a video began to circulate on blogs in which, allegedly, a citizen dissatisfied with the pension reform threw an egg at the President of France. We decided to check if this is true.

The video that went viral on social networks is very short: in these three seconds you can see Emmanuel Macron standing surrounded by citizens and security guards, and then an egg hits him in the head. Most publications claim that the video is recent: on April 19, they wrote about it that it happened “yesterday” and that this is a consequence of the French dissatisfaction with the recent pension reform. The video was published by many popular Russian Telegram channels: “Ax - hot news"(233,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Solovyov"(200,000), "Ukraine | News" (192,000) and "Lentach"(160,000). Major media outlets wrote about the incident: “Russian newspaper" And RTVI.

April 15, French President Emmanuel Macron signed law on raising the retirement age. This reform passed in the context of street protests and confrontation between the president and parliament. For three months, demonstrations and strikes did not stop in France, and they are still going on. Many publications claimed that it was after the signing of the scandalous law that Macron was thrown an egg. Sometimes given details: This allegedly happened during a meeting of the president with citizens in Alsace.

Macron's trip to the east of the country, to Alsace, on April 19 really worked out difficult. The crowd booed him, with many shouting insults and giving the president the middle finger. Three people for this will appear before trial in September: they were charged with insulting a government official. But the video, which spread on Russian Telegram channels, has nothing to do with the latest events.

The footage of the egg being thrown at the French president is a fragment of a video from six years ago. The incident did not occur in Alsace, but in Paris on March 1, 2017, at an agricultural exhibition. How writes fact-checking service Reuters, then the publication was the first to publish this video Le Parisien. There is a video from another point taken by a user Twitter.

At that time, Macron was not yet the head of the republic; his unsuccessful visit to the exhibition took place in the midst of the election campaign. Subsequently, the French media wrote a lot about this. Le Figaro, for example, remindedthat eggs have been thrown at Macron before - for example, in June 2016, when he served as Minister of Economy.

Thus, the video of Macron getting hit in the head with an egg has nothing to do with the 2023 pension reform. These shots are already six years old.

Cover photo: social networks

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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