Around 300 vehicles taking part in a Canada-style protest convoy against Covid regulations have arrived in Lille, northern France.
They are en route to Brussels, where officials have already banned a demonstration called for tomorrow. The flag-bearing trek north came after 97 people were arrested in Paris yesterday as thousands of demonstrators defied a ban on trying to block traffic, with 81 still in custody.
The convoy, while smaller than the nearly 3,000 vehicles that converged on the capital from cities across France, has stopped at the car park of a shopping centre outside Lille, just south of the Belgian border. "We'll go to Brussels to try to block it, to fight against this policy of permanent control," said Jean-Pierre Schmit, an unemployed 58-year-old who came from Toulouse.
For Sandrine, 45, who came from Lyon, the government's response to the Covid crisis had revealed that "we're losing our freedoms bit by bit, in an insidious way".