Status: 01/31/2023 12:10 p.m
Protests against the government’s planned pension reforms continue. Transport companies are on strike, as are schools, and energy companies are cutting back on electricity production. President Macron is coming under increasing pressure.
On the second major day of protests against the planned pension reform, strikes paralyzed large parts of public life in France. Trains, buses and flights were canceled nationwide, and there were no lessons in many schools.
The employees of the energy company EDF shut down electricity production in protest, but this has not yet led to power outages. A large part of the workforce also stopped work in the refineries and fuel depots of the energy group TotalEnergies.
Demonstrations were planned at about 200 locations today. About 11,000 security forces are supposed to prevent riots, 4,000 in Paris alone. “If the prime minister hasn’t heard the message, then we will now convey it louder and more numerously,” said CGT union boss Philippe Martinez to the BFM and RTL broadcasters.
Union against raising the retirement age
The unions are calling for the planned increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 to be abandoned. President Emmanuel Macron had stressed the night before that the reform was necessary “to save the system”. The pension fund is currently showing a plus, but according to estimates by experts, it will slip into a deficit of 14 billion euros by 2030. The reform is therefore “inevitable,” said Macron, referring to the other EU countries where the retirement age is already significantly higher.
According to a poll published Tuesday, Macron’s approval ratings fell five percentage points as a result of the pension reform debate, to just 36 percent. Almost two-thirds of the population blamed the government for the strikes and the paralysis of public life, according to the Odoxa Institute poll. For Macron, pension reform is one of the most important projects of his second and final term.
Unions and demonstrators are calling on the government to abandon plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Image: AFP
Expansion of the protest movement expected
Experts expect that the protest movement could expand. At the first attempt at reform in 2019, France had experienced the longest strikes since the student protests in 1968. “Pensions are a sacred cow in the mind of the French. They are a symbol of the entire social system and can therefore become a catalyst for anger,” social expert Raymond Soubie told the newspaper Le Parisien.
In addition to raising the retirement age, the reform also includes an increase in the minimum pension to EUR 1,200. In addition, the employment of seniors should be promoted. On the first day of protests on January 19, more than a million people took to the streets.