Why Macron’s pension plans have stoked so much anger in France
Since Emmanuel Macron forced through his plans to raise the pension age in France last week, public dismay over the change to a fiercely protected feature of French social policy has been bubbling. On Thursday night, at the end of the ninth day of nationwide protests since January, that anger reached boiling point.
The most visible symbol of the tensions came in video from Bordeaux, where the doors of the city hall were set alight after a day of intensifying action on the streets. The blaze was quickly put out by firefighters. But all across the country, the unpopularity of Macron’s plans was plainly visible. The authorities put the number of people on the streets at 1.1 million, while unions said it was about 3.5 million. Either way, the severity of the clashes between protesters and the police – and scale of the wider movement – suggest that the fight against the changes is far from over.
On Wednesday, Macron made a live TV appearance to defend his plan to raise the official retirement age in France from 62 to 64 – and if any of his opponents were hoping for a message of compromise, they were sorely disappointed. Macron ruled out any change to the deeply unpopular policy, and also rejected calls for a reshuffle of his government or the resignation of his prime minister, Élisabeth Borne. He said he had only one regret: “That I have not succeeded in convincing people of the necessity of this reform.”
That was one of the triggers for the scale and intensity of yesterday’s action – but the protesters’ anger is not limited to Macron’s management of the situation, or even the pension proposals. They say that the president’s move to force the reforms through without a vote has raised wider concerns about the state of French
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