‘Govt firm on rail reform’

Le Pen joins European far-right alliance

PARIS, April 5, (AFP): French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Thursday the government would not budge on its plans to shake up state rail operator SNCF after two days of train strikes that snarled rail traffic across the country.

Trains were operating “almost normally” on Thursday as rail workers resumed service after the first instalment in a three-month rolling strike, seen as the biggest challenge yet to President Emmanuel Macron’s reform agenda.

“I can confirm that we are determined to pursue this reform,” Philippe told France Inter radio, saying it was necessary “to ensure the efficient operations and quality of the SNCF.”

But unions claimed they were gaining support for their challenge to plans to phase out the guaranteed jobs for life and early retirement currently enjoyed by rail workers.

Under the government’s plan, new hires at the debt-ridden SNCF would no longer have right to these benefits.

It would also turn the SNCF into a corporate entity whose shares would be owned by the state — a move unions see as a first step toward privatisation, despite the government’s denials.

A poll last Sunday by the Ifop survey group found that 46 percent of respondents found the strike “justified”, with a slim majority of 51 percent saying the government “should complete the reform as it has been announced”.

“I’m convinced that we have public opinion on our side, and that train users support us,” Laurent Brun, head of the train branch of the CGT union told CNews TV.

Organisers of a support fund for striking workers, meant to compensate their lost wages, claimed late Wednesday that more than 220,000 euros ($270,000) had been raised from some 6,500 donators.

Analysts have warned that support for the strikers could grow the longer it goes on, with unions vowing to down tools two days out of every five for the next three months.

For Guillaume Durand, a transport specialist at Paris-based consultancy Wavecom, support for Macron’s attempts to make the SNCF more competitive could founder on a growing wave of social discontent.

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Jean-Marie Le Pen, the firebrand co-founder of France’s farright National Front who was eventually kicked out of the party by his daughter, confirmed Thursday he had joined a little-known European extreme right movement.

Le Pen said he was now a member of the Alliance for Peace and Freedom (APF), a grouping of European far-right parties, which said the octogenarian had joined on March 22.

“We welcome Jean-Marie Le Pen at a time of revolutionary changes in Europe – our guide and leader for the oncoming struggles and victories!”, the APF said in a statement on its website, calling him “the epitome” of “ideological coherence and resistance”.

“While the failed old Marxist and liberal policies are disappearing in the East and being questioned in the West, the idea of a Europe of traditions, sovereignties and identity is clearly dawning on the horizon,” it added.

Le Pen, who was elected to the European Parliament on a National Front ticket in 2004 but now sits as an independent, declined to comment on the move.

The APF does not have enough members to constitute a recognised group in the EU’s parliament, meaning its members currently sit in a nonattached capacity.