People are seen at a terrace of a bar in Lille, northern France, May 19, 2021. France on Wednesday took an important step forward towards returning to normality as people in the country can once again meet up in cafes or enjoy a meal in restaurants, which are now allowed to open their terraces.(Photo:Xinhua)

More than 200,000 protesters marched across France on Saturday against a health pass championed by President Emmanuel Macron to defeat COVID-19, even though the measure has already been applied.

The interior ministry said a total of 214,845 people, including nearly 14,000 in Paris, took part in the nationwide protests, down by about 22,000 from last weekend, but still strong for the fifth straight weekend.

Macron sees the health pass - which makes vaccination essential to carry on with routine activities like sipping a coffee in a cafe or traveling on a train - as the key to emerging from the pandemic and avoiding further lockdowns.

But protesters - an eclectic mix of far-right, yellow vest anti-inequality activists, anti-vaxxers and civil liberties campaigners - say that the policy encroaches on the basic freedom so prized by the French.

Two separate protests were taking place in Paris - in a sign of the inability of the protesters to fully unite - with slogans like "free France!" "stop the corona-madness" or "yes to the freedom to choose" being chanted and brandished.

Yann Fontaine, 30, who works in a notary office, said he believed the health pass is a measure that "kills freedom and is segregationist."

Unlike in the yellow vests demonstrations from 2018, there have been no reports of major incidents in these protests. But the numbers of protesters remain strong and show no sign of diminishing.

About 237,000 people turned out on August 7 across France, including 17,000 in Paris, the interior ministry said, exceeding the 204,000 recorded the weekend before and numbers extremely unusual for protests at the height of the summer break.

Protesters accuse the government of downplaying the numbers taking to the streets. A collective called Le Nombre Jaune published a detailed breakdown city by city on Facebook in a bid to show the actual numbers last week were 415,000.

Other protests were taking place in cities, especially in the south, including Toulon, Montpellier, Nice, Marseille and Perpignan, where numbers have sometimes exceeded those in Paris. 

Macron, who faces reelection in 2022, has shown little patience with the demands of the protesters while his Health Minister Olivier Veran last week lashed out at a movement "about which we are talking far too much."

AFP