France is not England, says leader of reform protests

FRANCE will not be turned into a “liberal England”, Emmanuel Macron was warned yesterday as clashes broke out in marches against the president’s business-friendly labour reforms.

Hundreds of masked protesters dressed in black clashed with police in Paris, who responded with tear gas and water cannons, as 4,000 strikes were called around France by the country’s biggest public sector trade union, the hardline CGT. Rail workers, students and civil servants were urged to protest and by mid-afternoon, the union had deemed the protests a success.

The reference to Britain came not from the unions but from Jean-luc Mélenchon, a far-left firebrand who pledged to force Mr Macron to backtrack on changes to France’s labour code, which he recently called a “social coup d’état”.

“France isn’t England,” the leader of opposition party France Unbowed said in Marseille. “This country doesn’t want the liberal world,”.

If Mr Macron’s reforms become law, it will bode well for a slew of other reforms he wants – on unemployment insurance, professional training and, most controversially, pensions.

Protest leaders hoped that ill-advised comments by Mr Macron apparently likening striking workers to “slackers” would swell the ranks of demonstrators. Many viewed it as an attack on the unemployed or workers on highly-protected staff contracts. But Mr Macron insisted: “We cannot move forward if we don’t tell it like it is.”