Europe May Day protests target austerity Next Thumbnails Previous Thumbnails Europe's anti-austerity activists used Wednesday's May Day demonstrations to rally supporters against eurozone economic policies, arguing that high unemployment and low growth were being exacerbated by leaders" response to the crisis. Politicians ranging from Greece's Alexis Tsipras, who nearly forced the collapse of his country's €173bn bailout when his far left Syriza party finished a close second in last year's national elections, to Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right National Front, attempted to ride the wave of growing anti-austerity sentiment by denouncing business and government leaders as misguided. The protests were particularly disruptive in Greece, where public sector unions held a one-day strike after the government postponed the official May Day holiday for a week because it clashed with the build-up to Sunday's Orthodox Easter celebrations. In Italy the rallies had extra edge coming just three days after an unemployed man shot and wounded two policemen outside the office of the prime minister, claiming he was acting out of economic desperation and wanted to kill politicians. Demonstrators in Turin held banners saying "crisis kills" with pictures of the gunman and his victims. Some threw eggs at members of the centre-left Democratic party which last week formed a coalition government with Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right. Italy's three main unions, more divided than not, united for the first time in five years for May Day, choosing Perugia as their venue in memory of two local government workers shot dead in March by a bankrupt entrepreneur. Creating jobs was the main theme with unionists warning that Italy was dying without work. Youth unemployment rose to 35.3 per cent in 2012, the highest in 35 years. "It is not possible to go on like this," said Raffaele Bonanni, leader of the moderate Catholic CISL federation. He urged the new coalition government led by Enrico Letta to cut waste in public spending a well as "thievery and privileges." Tax evasion, he said, should be made a criminal offence. In Milan, armed vehicles and riot police sealed off the city's luxury shopping streets on Wednesday as hundreds of marchers made their way from the city's central Piazza del Duomo. The crowd, made up mainly of young people, chanted "We need jobs" as they made their way through the city centre watched by quizzical groups of tourists. In Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the centre-left prime minister, was squirted with a water pistol and drowned out by booing during a speech in the northern city of Aarhus. But in cities across the continent, the protests were more subdued than many people had expected in such difficult economic and social circumstances. In Madrid - capital of a country that is among the hardest hit by austerity - rallies were far less dramatic than they were earlier in the crisis. Although protests in Athens were smaller than last year's, transport ground to a halt and the militant seamen's union prevented island ferries from leaving Piraeus port as hundreds of police were deployed around the city to guard against violence, which did not materialise. Joined by a group of leftwing lawmakers, Mr Tsipras took aim at the country's current establishment, calling on Greek workers to rise up and change the Greek leadership. "The economy isn't going to recover with a bankrupt banking sector and corrupt political system," he said. We want the workers to step forward strongly so that we can rebuild Greece together. Spanish unions said they were holding more than 80 demonstrations across the country to protest a 27 per cent unemployment rate, with the largest in the centre of Madrid. The heads of the country's largest unions called on the Spanish government to arrive at a national pact in the face of the mounting "social emergency." "It is a lie that there could not be alternatives to this economic policy," said Cándido Méndez, general secretary of the UGT union. This May 1 must mark a before and an after. At the same time Mariano Rajoy, prime minister, was urged to cut more by one of the loudest critical voices within his own Popular Party, Esperanza Aguirre, a party grandee and former president of the Madrid region. Writing on her personal blog Ms Aguirre argued the government's tax increases had further stultified the Spanish economy, and called for "radical and unprecedented reform of public administrations" through more cuts. In Paris, Ms Le Pen kicked off the May Day demonstrations - attended by politicians of both the left and right - with an angry attack on austerity policies and what she called "ultraliberal globalisation." Addressing hundreds of flag-waving supporters at a rally in front of the Opera in the centre of the capital, Ms Le Pen said France was "lost in the darkness of Europe." She said France was "stuck in an absurd endless policy of austerity . . . because they have to always say yes to Brussels, and of course to Berlin, and always to the magnates of high finance and their servile valets at the European Central Bank and the European Commission." Evoking Joan of Arc, the 15th century symbol of French resistance against foreign powers, Ms Le Pen added: "Then it was the king of England who had become king of France. Now it is the king of Brussels. At the main leftwing demonstration in Paris led by the communist-backed CGT trade union, unionists and other activists gathered at the Bastille were in subdued mood, far from the excitement of President François Hollande's election a year ago. Daniel Vergnaud, a retired pharmacist, said: "There is disappointment on the left. The policies of the right haven't changed under Hollande. In fact, they are accelerating. Muffling the protests in France are deep divisions within the union movement over how to respond to spending cuts and welfare reforms imposed by the socialist government. The unions, which were more or less united in opposition to Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr Hollande's centre-right predecessor, are split into those supporting recent labour reforms and those wanting them scrapped - and are holding separate marches across the country. Additional reporting by Hugh Carnegy in Paris, Richard Milne in Oslo and Rachel Sanderson in Milan