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Paris (AFP) – This Tuesday, March 28, 2023, France is experiencing its tenth day of protests against the pension reform of President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking a negotiated solution to the increasingly violent social conflict without withdrawing his unpopular law.
The last call left, on Thursday, March 23, 457 detainees and 441 police officers and gendarmes injured, mostly in the riots that followed the marches with more than a million people throughout France, according to the authorities.
In this context of growing tension, Macron and the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, assured that they would “reach out” to the unions, the spearhead of the protests since January, but without giving in on their demand to withdraw the reform.
Laurent Berger, leader of the moderate CFDT union, said he would agree to negotiate but only if reform was “put aside”, especially the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64.
On Tuesday, he urged the creation of a “mediation process” to “find a way out” of the social crisis.
The union centrals request the withdrawal of this reform that delays the retirement age to 2030 and advances to 2027 the requirement to contribute 43 years (and not 42) to collect a full pension.
Since January 19, the date of the first demonstration, they have managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people (3.5 million on March 7 and 23, according to the CGT union) in large peaceful protests, but without success.
“An unprecedented security device”
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced an “unprecedented security device” made up of around 13,000 agents in France and warned of the presence in Paris of “more than 1,000 radicals, some from abroad.” The authorities expect “from 650,000 to 900,000″ demonstrators” and warn that the presence of young people in the marches “will double or triple,” according to police sources.
“We want to show our discontent and say that, even if we are teenagers…, we have the right to say that we are against it,” Selma said Monday, as she blocked off her secondary school in Montreuil, east of Paris.
The trains circulated this Tuesday at idle, and in Paris, public transport registered “disturbances”, according to its operator RATP.
In Lille (north), Yasmine Mounib, a 19-year-old student, said she “agrees with their demands”, but that on transport, “they could at least leave the morning trains”, explaining that she got up at 04:00 in the morning for a class four hours later, which he will still not be able to follow.
The protests have taken multiple forms for weeks: thousands of tons of garbage accumulated in the streets of Paris, blockades of warehouses and refineries that left 15% of gas stations without fuel, among others.
Macron’s decision to finally adopt his project by decree, fearing he would lose the vote in Parliament, and his refusal to back down radicalized the protests, which from March 16 degenerated into riots.
“The feeling of injustice and of not being heard fuels emotion,” warns a poll by the Odoxa polling company on Tuesday, in which Macron and Borne lose popular support, at 30% and 28% respectively.
The last word, in the hands of the Constitutional Council
Pending the opinion of the Constitutional Council on its validity, the government seeks to quickly turn the page with other priorities such as health, education and seek how to guarantee a stable majority in Parliament.
The unions had already warned Macron in mid-March of the explosive situation that would be generated if he did not listen to the discontent with the reform, which more than two out of three French people reject, according to polls.
Its definitive adoption on March 20 implied an increase in the intensity of the protests, whose repression by the police set off the alarms of human rights NGOs, lawyers, magistrates and even the Council of Europe.
The images of a pitched battle returned to the front page on Saturday during protests against an agricultural dam destined for agribusiness in Sainte-Soline (central-west), which left two protesters in a coma.
In both cases, “there is a disproportionate use of force that we had already denounced during [la protesta social en 2018 y 2019 de] the yellow vests,” Jean-Claude Samouiller of the NGO Amnesty International told AFP.
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