Explained | Why is France seeing widespread protests over Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms?
The HinduThe story so far: Protesters on Friday, March 17, clashed with the police at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, near the National Assembly building amid growing unrest over the ruling government’s decision to change the state pension age from 62 to 64, meaning people would have to work longer to get a full state pension. But on Thursday, March 16, riot police and protesters clashed in the capital after President Emmanuel Macron’s administration used a special provision in the Constitution to push through the contentious pension reform without holding a vote in the National Assembly as the House plunged into uproar with Opposition politicians singing the French national anthem and holding protest signs in Parliament. The government says the measure to gradually raise the legal retirement age by three months every year, till it reaches 64 by 2030, is “indispensable” in order to balance the pension system and keep it financially viable. In 2019, his administration attempted to introduce a different reform which would not raise the retirement age but get rid of the special regimes of benefits and pension ages for different categories of workers.