PARIS (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to fill the streets of France Thursday for the 11th day of nationwide resistance to a government proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The furious public reaction to the plan has cornered and weakened French President Emmanuel Macron.
France’s highest body on constitutional affairs will be considering the higher retirement age. The Constitutional Council is expected to issue a ruling this month and Macron’s opponents hope it will severely limit his proposal.
In many countries, raising the retirement age by two years wouldn’t throw the nation into such disarray. But the French public is overwhelmingly against pension reform, and unrelenting demonstrations against it have morphed into wider anger.
HOW ANGRY ARE THE FRENCH?
Mounds of up to 10,000 tons of trash piled up on the streets of Paris during a weekslong strike by sanitation workers over a plan that would push their retirement age from 57 to 59 — lower than the national age because their jobs are physically harder.
“People are angry,” said Jerome Villier, a 43-year-old doctoral researcher in Paris. “It’s obvious.”
Many governments in the developed world are in similar situations. Population growth is down, people are living longer, medicine is better and benefits cost more. Democracies’ attempts to balance budgets by cutting benefits, particularly in countries with generous plans like France’s, put administrations at risk. Many agree that Macron that has made some fundamental missteps.
THE NUCLEAR OPTION
Fearing he might not get enough votes in parliament to pass the bill, Macron resorted to the “ nuclear option ” by using a special article of the French constitution allowing the government to force the bill through without a vote. That prompted outrage across France that further fueled discontent, diminished his popularity, and galvanized his critics’ image of him as a monarchical leader.
Macron lost his majority in parliament last year and his government survived two no-confidence votes last month — one by only a razor-thin nine votes — after he angered the nation by ramming the reform through parliament.
Experts say the protests show that Macron was re-elected because of antipathy for far-right contender Marine Le Pen more than enthusiasm for him. And even if the protests die down, the French president will still have sustained a political bloody nose and a permanent stain on his authority.
“I’m worried for France. Because people really hate Macron — we hate him — and we’re only at the beginning, we have four more years,” said insurance salesman Mohamed Belmoud, 28. “He continued being top-down. The French need to see more compromise.”