Nearly a million people took to the streets of cities across France on Saturday during the fourth round of nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the country’s pension eligibility age from 62 to 64.
The French Interior Ministry said an estimated 963,000 protesters rallied in Paris, Marseilles, Nantes, Nice, Toulouse, and other cities and towns large and small for the fourth straight day of demonstrations, Agence France-Pressereports.
Authorities in Paris said nearly 100,000 people turned out to Saturday’s demonstrations, which included many young people who could not make it to the previous three days’ protests. Union leaders said the number of Paris protesters was five times as high.
One teen protesting in the capital’s Place de la République carried a placard reading, “I don’t want my parents to die at work.”
Others held banners declaring, “No to working longer,” Not one year more, not one euro less”, and other slogans.
There were reports of police brutality in cities including Rennes, where water cannons and other “less-lethal” weapons were used against protesters, the overwhelming majority of whom marched peacefully.
The massive demonstrations are a critical test for Macron’s government, and for the opposition. Macron’s centrist Renaissance party faces an uphill battle to get the pension plan passed in a parliament where it no longer enjoys majority control. Renaissance needs the support of right-wing opposition lawmakers in order to avert a highly controversial constitutional measure that would allow the pension reform to be forced through without a vote.
Macron steadfastly insists he’s delivering upon a campaign promise to reform France’s pension system, one of the world’s most generous. The president asserts raising the retirement age is an “indispensable” move to guarantee the future survival of the pension system, while pointing to higher retirement ages in other European Union countries.
An inter-union coalition of 13 labor groups said in a joint statement on Saturday that “since January 19, the population has continued to demonstrate its very strong determination to refuse the government’s pension reform project through strikes, demonstrations, and also the online petition, which has reached one million signatures.”
“Over the weeks, the polls also show an increase in this massive rejection since now, more than 7 out of 10 French people and 9 out of 10 workers say they are opposed to the reform project,” the coalition continued. “This social movement, unprecedented in its scope, is therefore now anchored in the social landscape. The government, like parliamentarians, cannot remain deaf to it.”
“If, despite everything, the government and the parliamentarians remained deaf to popular protest, the inter-union would call on workers, young people, and retirees to harden the movement by bringing France to a halt in all sectors on March 7.”
The inter-union coalition said it would meet Thursday evening and that “in the meantime, we call on the government to withdraw its bill and on parliamentarians to take their responsibilities in the face of the massive rejection of the population [of this] unjust and brutal project.”
“If, despite everything, the government and the parliamentarians remained deaf to popular protest, the inter-union would call on workers, young people, and retirees to harden the movement by bringing France to a halt in all sectors on March 7,” the unions vowed, adding that the coalition “will take advantage of March 8, the international day of struggle for women’s rights, to highlight the major social injustice of this reform against women.”
