MUTTERSHOLTZ: Protesters greeted French President Emmanuel Macron with boos and calls for him to resign in his first public appearance since he signed into law an unpopular rise in the retirement age.
Outside a factory he was visiting in the eastern Alsace region, Macron was faced with hostile banners and banging on pots. Unionised workers briefly cut electrical power inside the factory.
Then, as he walked through a crowd in a nearby village, many shouted “Macron, resign!” and one man told him: “We don’t want this pension (reform), what don’t you get?”
Another man told him he was leading a corrupt government and added: “You’ll fall soon, just wait and see.”
There were also some cheers – one man told Macron to “hang in there,” a woman thanked him for his work and others asked for selfies. But even in an area that is pro-Macron and voted slightly more for him than the national average in the 2022 presidential election, the reception was mostly hostile.
Macron signed into law at the weekend a rise in the retirement age which means citizens must work two years longer, to 64, before receiving their state pension.
That was after three months of protests that mobilised huge crowds and at times turned violent. Opinion polls show a vast majority of voters oppose the reform.
In the village of Selestat, the centrist president said he was fine with people expressing their discontent “but the country must move forward”. Earlier during the factory visit, Macron shrugged off the display of discontent, saying: “Pans won’t help France move forward”.
He added that it was not possible for a society to listen only to those who “make the most noise” as he sought to highlight positive aspects of France’s labour legalisation.
Macron and his government say they want to move on and work on other measures to do with working conditions, law and order, education and health issues.
But his Selestat outing made clear many were not ready to move on. And they were not the only ones.
In Paris, a free climber known as the “Frech Spiderman” scaled a 38-storey skyscraper to demonstrate his opposition to the pension law.
“I’m here to tell Emmanuel Macron to come back down to earth … by climbing with no safety net,” Alain Robert said.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron has signed into law his government’s highly unpopular pension reforms, which raise the state pension age from 62 to 64.
It happened hours after France’s top constitutional body cleared the change.
The Constitutional Council rejected opposition calls for a referendum – but it also struck out some aspects of the reforms, citing legal flaws. Following the council’s ruling, protesters set fires across Paris and 112 people were arrested.
Twelve days of demonstrations have been held against the reforms since January.–Agenceis
