Workers around Europe thronged the streets on Wednesday for annual Labour Day rallies to protests against austerity measures meant to battle the recession and the euro debt crisis, dpa reported. In France, both right-wing and left-wing protesters denounced the government's belt-tightening measures. In the southern city of Marseille, up to 10,000 people marched under a slogan "No to austerity, whether it's from the Left or the Right." Workers also marched in Toulouse, Lyon and several other cities, but divisions within the trade union movement saw a low turnout in many places. The biggest march was set for late afternoon in Paris. At an earlier rally in the capital, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front also condemned "hyper-austerity" at her party's annual May day in honour of France's warrior-saint Joan of Arc. In Spain, tens of thousands marched in some 80 localities to protest against high unemployment, currently at 27 per cent. In Greece, which is still shaken by the deep recession following the country's near bankruptcy, some 5,000 workers gathered in Athens to protest against the government's austerity measures as a 24-hour strike disrupted public transport across the country. In Bulgaria, Socialist party leader Sergey Stanishev told thousands of supporters in Sofia that the centre-right government, which resigned in February, was to blame for the country's "despair and misery". The former communist Balkan country is facing snap elections on May 12. In Germany, which has not yet been hit by recession, police were mostly involved in clashes with leftists who were trying to obstruct right-wing marches in a number of cities. Riot police in Berlin used water cannons and pepper spray to push back a crowd of some 2,000 left-wingers, some of whom began throwing stones. Officers also used a crane to remove four opponents who chained themselves to a concrete weight on a street. In the financial centre of Frankfurt, the NPD was forced to relocate a 180-strong rally to a suburb after 600 leftists disrupted public transport by blocking a railway track. One of the highest turnouts of the day was in Russia, where police reported some 90,000 workers marching in Moscow alone. However, most marchers weren't protesters but state-company workers following their employers calls to mark the traditional May holiday and to support President Vladimir Putin's policies. One of the few Asian countries marking Labour Day were the Philippines, where thousands of workers took to the streets of Manila to demand higher wages and an end to short-term labour contracts.
