“In the face of such a massive protest, the government should abandon its pension reform,” Patricia Drewon, a spokeswoman for the Force Ouvriere union, told a news conference in Paris. France’s Interior Ministry counted 1.27 million people who took part in marches across the country on Tuesday, up from 1.1 million on the first day of the Jan. 19 protest, Bloomberg reported. According to the French Ministry of State, one in five civil servants (19.4 percent) went on strike on Tuesday at noon, compared to 28 percent on January 19. According to the Ministry of National Education, the proportion of teachers on strike has reached 25.9 percent, compared to 38.5 percent on average ten days ago.
Subway and commuter trains serving the capital were severely disrupted, traffic was restricted on most lines, and many schools were closed. Protesters also blocked three oil refineries owned by TotalEnergies SE, and strikes by Electricité de France SA employees led to the shutdown of more than 3 gigawatts of nuclear power reactor.
Macron has pledged to carry out his program, which includes raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. A break in policy would jeopardize a key part of his strategy to stabilize France’s financial deficit and boost the economy’s ability to grow and create jobs. Protesters called retirement at 64 “a step into the stone age” and chanted the slogan: “Macron can work until he’s 70 if he wants to.”
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Born said late Tuesday that the government had listened to “questions and doubts” raised by the pension plan and said the parliamentary debate due to start next week “will enrich the project.” Bourne insisted Sunday that raising the age thresholds “was no longer negotiable.”
Opponents of raising the minimum retirement age cite 1995, when then-President Jacques Chirac abandoned plans to change the pension system after long debates and protests. However, in 2010, Nicolas Sarkozy raised the minimum retirement age to 62, despite months of unrest.
Macron’s task becomes more difficult after he lost an absolute majority in last year’s election and faced a sharp downgrade in his trust rating due to domestic policy lapses. Opponents reproach him for paying more attention to his international image than to solving the country’s socioeconomic problems. His administration has tried to win over conservative Republicans who have traditionally supported raising the retirement age, but some of them have expressed doubts since the first day of the protests.
