Thousands take to streets across France in pension protests
HUNDREDS of thousands joined a final national protest before Christmas against pension reform in France as Emmanuel Macron’s government pledged “total determination” to see the overhaul through.
In an ominous sign of radicalisation, electricity workers caused chaos by cutting power to almost 100,000 homes overnight in Bordeaux and Lyon as part of the protest, warning of morethat bigger cuts could follow. The hardline CGT union said workers “only targeted public buildings and big business”.
For the first time since 2010, all of France’s unions marched together in the third day of national protests in a crippling two-week campaign that has punished commuters and business in this crucial festive period.
However, in a boost for the French president, they failed to reach the hoped-for million mark, with police putting the numbers at 615,000 nationwide – lower than the 800,000 estimated for the first march on Dec 5.
The Eiffel Tower was closed and police were on high alert to avert looting and the setting on fire of cars and buildings. Officers fired tear gas and stun grenades in clashes with “black bloc” anarchists in the Place de la Nation, but the marches were otherwise peaceful. The government is adamant that it will push through a “universal” points-based pension system and end the current patchwork of 42 “special regimes” that offer early retirement to many in the public sector.
As red flares raged in Paris, rail workers, teachers, civil servants, lawyers and hospital workers chanted songs including: “We’re here whether you like it or not, Macron.”
Pierre Lespagnol, 68, a retired rail worker with the hardline Sud union, told The Daily Telegraph: “We have nothing to say about this reform apart from it must be scrapped. It’s a change towards a neoliberal society that doesn’t interest us. France is one of the last countries with a pension system of solidarity. Macron is playing Thatcher and it won’t wash.” Hardline unions, notably the CGT, want the reform shelved and the current system – in which taxpayers pay €8billion (£6.8billion) annually to prop up loss-making regimes that allow some to retire in their mid-50s – to be “improved”.
The moderate CFDT union, France’s largest, backs the reform but wants the Macron government to drop a move to create a “pivot age” that would effectively raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2027. The government says the new system will be fairer and improve pensions for women and low earners in particular.
Addressing parliament, Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, said there would be no climbdown despite CGT threats to paralyse transport over the Christmas period. “My determination, and that of the government and the majority, is total,” Mr Philippe told MPS.
He is due to meet union leaders today in an attempt to break the deadlock before Christmas.
Despite high levels of striking drivers, the national rail operator SNCF pledged that all passengers who had booked tickets on fast TGV trains would reach their destination over the weekend as the holiday period starts.
With the battle for public opinion raging, some 62 per cent of respondents to a poll for the RTL radio said they supported the strike but 69 per cent said they wanted a “Christmas truce”.
‘France is one of the last countries with a pension system of solidarity. Macron is playing Thatcher and it won’t wash’
As France looks at a third week of strikes against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms with no sign of resolution, thousands marched again in the streets of Paris yesterday, eager to cancel Christmas. Philippe Martinez, the dour, moustachioed leader of the Communist CGT union, dismissed a plea from PM Édouard Philippe: non, there would be no trains for the holidays, or as few as the strikers could manage.
The question begs to be asked: Why are we French so unhappy with our lot? The statistics website The Spectator Index just published a ranking of 22 countries whose citizens believe they live in the best place in the world.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the United States comes first at 37 per cent. More of a surprise, Saudi Arabia comes a close second. India, Thailand, Australia, China follow. And the French? Next to last at 6 per cent, just before Germany (5 per cent): even the British (10 per cent) outrank us.
Forget long holidays, a good health system, a life expectancy – of over 83 – only topped by the Japanese. Forget good roads and good trains (when they run). Forget museums, Val d’isère, Saint-tropez, Versailles, Chateau Latour and 258 cheeses. No matter that from Le Général to Macron we’ve had a solid diet of exceptionalism: we’re too busy feeling sorry for ourselves to listen.
Hence the current anger and fear strengthening the strikes.
The French don’t like optimism. It is suspect. Self-delusional. Dangerously hubristic, even. France is not a ‘‘yes, we can’’ civilisation, it’s ‘‘no, we can’t’’. We’ll never elect a Boris Johnson (and to be realistic, we haven’t got one).
We despise pie-in-thesky, or the simultaneous having and gobbling up of cake (we cut off the head of the last monarch reputed to have suggested we eat some). To impress us, a politician must look forceful (think Jacques Chirac), intellectual (Mitterrand), clever (Giscard). What they shouldn’t do, ever, is smile.
The late Polly Platt, a clever American Parisienne who advised expats on how to deal with the French, warned her British and American students never to smile first: it is taken here as an admission of weakness, and the French hate weakness, especially when cheerfully owned up to.
Being trapped on a zip-line, wearing a hard hat, too-short socks and the national flag? Forget it. The unforgettable picture of Bojo grinning happily in that position was used again and again by French papers to illustrate why he would never amount to anything.
Had it happened to a French politician, he would have fired half his staff in a white rage the minute he’d touched the ground.
What the French do is ennui. One of the best collections of poems in our literature, by the great Charles Baudelaire, is called Le Spleen de Paris.
Existentialism was all about a pessimistic view of man’s free agency, godless and alone – and still all those tortured philosophers with dark good looks (or even without the looks, like Sartre), warning of the apocalypse, never failed to pull the girls, as long as they did not smile.
Ennui was a pose, but it froze on French faces to become perpetual discontent. And whatever optimism existed in Macron when he won the presidency must have been cut down to size, because that’s what we do to tall poppies: French misery loves company.