Fact Check: Has Paris Requisitioned the Military to Clean the Capital’s Debris-Locked Streets?

Last week, up to 10,000 tons of rubbish were dumped on the streets of the Parisian capital, sparking a slew of fake news on social media.

Garbage has piled up on the sidewalks of Paris since the beginning of March.

Opposing the pension reform of French President Emmanuel Macron, the capital’s garbage collectors are on strike, and some even block access to waste incinerators.

The latest misleading claim to go viral was a Twitter photo posted on Friday. On it, three military men clean up a pile of garbage in the Latin Quarter of the capital.

This led many social media users to claim that it was the military, not the garbage collectors, that were commandeered to collect garbage in Paris.

But the French gendarmerie hastened to refute this. In a tweetThe division of the armed forces said that this is a “local initiative.” They are simply Republican guardsmen in military uniform who collect garbage for sanitary reasons and, above all, for security reasons near their barracks. End of story.”

The gendarmerie explained that barracks were located next to this street, and the military had to clear it for security reasons, since many trash bins and piles of garbage were set on fire during protests in the past few days.

But can the government force military personnel to get rid of garbage? It happened twice and only in the southern city of Marseille once in 1999 and then in 2010.

But this fake news highlights the confrontation between the Ministry of the Interior and the Paris City Hall.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to requisition the garbage collectors, but she refused, saying she supported a strike against state pension reform.

But the mayor of Paris lost the showdown, and the ministry says in a press release they requisitioned 674 garbage collectors to provide some minimal service on Tuesday.

According to the Paris City Hallthe amount of uncollected garbage in Paris dropped slightly from 10,000 tons to 9,300 tons as of Monday evening.

Despite the order, protests are still going on in Paris and at the incinerators, especially in Ivry-sur-Seine, which is the largest in Europe. This is a clear signal from the strikers: the garbage is not going anywhere yet.