Majority of French want to continue protests against pension reform

64% of the French is in favor of continuing protests and mobilizations against pension reform and 45% want a hardening of the movement, according to a poll released this Monday.

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The reform was promulgated in the early hours of last Saturday, a few hours after the Constitutional Council give its endorsement to the most important elements of the measure, especially the increase in the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years.

However, the survey of the public opinion company praise for the BFM channel, it indicates that 69% of the French are still opposed to the reform, a figure that has remained stable between 65 and 72% since it was presented in January.

The poll, carried out on 1,003 people last Saturday and Sunday, when the reform had already been promulgated, shows that the percentage of French people who want the protest to get tougher (45%), has risen 5 points in the last three weeks, while those who prefer that they conclude have dropped 2 points to 35%.

President Emmanuel Macron will address the country on television tonight at 8:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), to try to calm the atmosphere and seek greater collaboration in other less controversial reforms, but the opposition leaders do not seem willing to give in.

Demonstrators take part in a bread concert to protest during French President Emmanuel Macron’s televised address to the nation after enacting a pension reform law, in Rennes, western France, on April 17, 2023. ( Photo by Damien MEYER / AFP) (DAMIEN MEYER /)

Macron “He is facing a country that he himself has fractured”pointed out the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faureto the television channel of the Senate, to which he insisted that the president “has not understood that it is not possible to continue without going back on the pension reform.”

The deputy of La Francia Insumisa Clementine Autainsaid he hopes that “the president will land” in the reality that “The French do not want to transform the two best years of their retirement into the two worst years of work.”

In an interview to RMC, Autain denounced what he considers the reform’s dubious legitimacy, since the government used expedited parliamentary procedure and the National Assembly he did not get to vote on the legislative project, by virtue of a constitutional article. “It is a minority that has imposed the law”he assured.

The inter-union coordination of eight large workers’ organizations holds a meeting today to discuss new mobilizations against the pension reform.

For now, the unions have called a Mass mobilization for May 1.

Source: Elcomercio