Did you miss the news this early morning? We’ve put together a recap to help you see things more clearly.
Pension reform: Back on the streets, the unions want to strike harder
Galvanized by the success of their first mobilization against the pension reform, the unions are calling for new demonstrations everywhere in France on Tuesday and threatening strikes in February. After their feat of January 19 (1.12 million demonstrators according to Beauvau, more than two million according to the organizers) the eight main French unions called “to mobilize even more massively on the 31st”. But after this successful first day, “the bar has been set high”, notes political scientist Dominique Adolfatto, and the unions “cannot afford a faux pas”. They are quite confident. “We are on track to be more numerous”, assures Céline Verzeletti, confederal secretary of the CGT. Hope reinforced by polls showing a growing rejection of the reform in public opinion.
Strike of January 31: “Very disrupted” traffic for TGVs, RERs and metros, 8 out of 10 buses in Paris
Train traffic will be “very severely disrupted” on Tuesday, for the second day of mobilization against the pension reform, in particular for TER and Transilien regional trains, and will be “severely disrupted” for TGVs, the SNCF announced on Sunday. The railway company plans two out of five TGVs on the North axis, one out of two in the East, one out of four on the Atlantic arc, one out of two on the South-East and two out of five for the Ouigo. The RATP, for its part, is counting on “very disrupted traffic on the RER and Metro networks and slightly disrupted on the surface network (Bus and Tramway)”. Thus, 8 trams and 8 buses out of 10 will run on the entire network.
French GDP growth reached 2.6% in 2022
Growth in French economic activity reached 2.6% in 2022, marked however by a slowdown in the fourth quarter due to a sharp decline in household consumption in a context of high inflation, INSEE said on Tuesday. . In 2022, gross domestic product (GDP) benefited above all from the rebound in activity recorded in the second part of 2021 “at the end of the health crisis”, then proving to be “significantly less dynamic”, according to the National Institute of Statistics. (INSEE). The figures are better than expected, however, as he expected GDP to rise by 2.5% and contract by 0.2% in the fourth quarter.