Nationalist Group Stages Unauthorized March in Annecy, France

On Tuesday, nationalist activists organized an unauthorized march that took place in the city center of Annecy around 10 p.m. between the Place des Romains and the Rue Carnot. A video posted by the "Syndicat des Fleuristes", which describes itself in its biography as "a group of French patriots with values and convictions", on Twitter with the headline "Annecy is nationalist", shows protesters, some hooded, marching in the city center of Annecy, chanting in front of the Notre-Dame-de-Liesse church, waving French and Savoyard flags, reports francebleu. "France for the French" or "Europe, youth, revolution" they chanted.

This demonstration has provoked outraged reactions from several left-wing elected officials. "This demonstration makes me shudder in my city!" reacted Fabienne Grébert, an Annecy ecologist and EELV leader in the region. "Militias in the street with warlike slogans. It has a whiff of 1934. We know the sequel..." she continues, also accusing the state of trivializing the far right. The ecologist mayor of Annecy, François Astorg, also condemned the demonstration.

The opposition municipal council also expresses concerns: "These are things we’ve already seen in other cities, with generally people who appropriate regional flags, here we have the flag of Savoy [...] it hurts to see images like these in the heart of the city of Annecy [...] it sends a very nauseating and really very dangerous image," said Antoine Grange, opposition city councilor in Annecy (the Annéciens group).

Condemning "the organization of a night march gathering far-right participants" in a press release, the prefect of Haute-Savoie recalls that this gathering had not been declared to the authorities, "which is why it could not be prohibited in advance".