Fresh protests as House debates pension reform

PARIS: France braced for new strikes and mass demonstrations against a deeply unpopular pensions overhaul yesterday, a day after lawmakers started debating the contested bill.

President Emmanuel Macron made the reform the heart of his re-election campaign last year, and is determined to implement it despite fierce opposition from the political left and unions, but also the wider public.

Yesterday’s protests are the third such nationwide rallies organised since the start of the year.

Last week’s demonstrations brought out 1.3 million people across the country, according to the police, while unions claimed more than 2.5 million people took part.

Either way, they were the largest such protests in France since 2010.

Trains and the Paris metro were expected to see “severe disruptions” yesterday, operators said, with around one in five flights at Orly airport south of the capital expected to be cancelled.

“We’re counting on there being rallies so that the country’s elected representatives take into account the opinion of citizens,” Philippe Martinez, leader of the hard-left CGT union, told the France 2 broadcaster on Monday.

More marches are planned for Saturday, although unions for rail operator SNCF said they would not call for a strike at the weekend, a holiday getaway date in some regions.

Mr Macron’s proposal includes hiking the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old — still lower than in many European countries — and increasing the number of years people must make contributions for a full pension.

His ruling party is hoping to pass the bill with the help of allies on the political right, without having to resort to controversial executive powers that dispense with the need for a ballot.

But members of the left-wing opposition are staunchly opposed, and have filed for thousands of amendments to the pension reform.

Mr Macron aims to lift the pensions system out of deficit by 2030 by finding around €18 billion euros (648 billion baht) of annual savings — mostly from pushing people to work for longer and abolishing some special retirement schemes.

“It’s reform or bankruptcy,” Public Accounts Minister Gabriel Attal said in parliament on Monday.