Published 12 February 2023 at 09.20
Foreign. Nearly a million people, many of them young people, demonstrated this weekend across France in reaction to the government's pension reform proposal. President Emmanuel Macron claims that the reform is necessary to secure the future of the pension system, but faces backlash.
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The demonstrations brought together 93,000 people in the capital Paris, according to police, but unions put the figure at around 500,000. The unions hope that the upcoming demonstration on February 16 will get even more people to participate.
The reform involves raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, which many French people strongly oppose.
According to France24, a significant part of the protesters are, perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, young people.
– We live in a productivity-fixated world and now we have to work two more years so that we can produce even more. It is not sustainable, says a younger protester.
The French have the longest retirement period among the populations of the OECD countries and a large majority of the population does not want to see this change.
According to surveys, two thirds of the population negatively attuned to the changes.