French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday “not to turn a deaf ear” to the challenge of reforming the pension system and announced new measures to improve the employment situation in the country, including wages.
“This anger exists because some feel like they are doing their part, but they don’t feel rewarded. No one can remain deaf, especially me, in relation to the demands for social justice. The answer cannot lie in immobility or extremism, we must act together. “, Macron said in a television message of about fifteen minutes, broadcast this Monday at 8:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. in Lisbon).
The French leader thus responded to the protests that have paralyzed France in recent months due to the conflicting approval of the reform of the pension system. Protesters took to the streets again tonight in several French cities after Macron’s statements.
Without retracting this reform, Macron proposed 100 days of social appeasement to the French, immediately insisting on improvements in the world of work.
“I will launch negotiations with employers and unions without limits or taboos from the third fair on essential issues such as better wages, career advancement, better wealth distribution, better working conditions and more work for seniors,” he announced. President.
Another issue that Macron promised to pay attention to was justice and the maintenance of order in the country, with the creation of more police brigades and the control of illegal immigration.
In another field of action, the French leader said that in the next school year teachers will be better paid and that 600,000 French people will have a family doctor.
The unions have already responded by reiterating that there will be no meeting with the President before May 1, the symbolic day on which the inter-union, which brings together at least 11 union centrals, intends to make one of the biggest street demonstrations in recent years, in a show of discontent with the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
“It was necessary to create an appeasement in relation to the reform of the pension system, but there was not a word about it,” lamented Laurent Berger, president of the CFDT union, in statements to journalists.
Minutes after the President’s announcement, several peaceful protests called in city halls throughout the country began to degenerate into violence.
In Paris, Rennes or Nantes there were clashes between protesters and the police, with garbage cans set on fire by the most radical protesters.
Following the favorable decision of the Constitutional Council regarding this reform, having rejected only some points of the decision made known last Friday, Macron decided to enact the reform overnight from Friday to Saturday.
Macron had 15 days to sign the law into law, and the immediate signing angered unions that had asked the president for a moratorium on final approval.
The revision of the pension law – a project promoted by Macron, which raises the retirement age without economic sanctions from 62 to 64 years – was approved without a vote in the National Assembly, using a provision of the French Constitution that allows it. .
In their decision late last week, members of the Constitutional Council censured some minor aspects of the diploma, but did not change its main measure, which raises the legal retirement age in France.
On Thursday, the French Interior Ministry estimated that around 380,000 protesters took to the streets in France on the 12th day of protest against the pension law, while the CGT union counted “more than 1.5 million”.
For both the authorities and the unions, the protest seemed to register a setback in the mobilization in most of the country’s cities.
Source: TSF
