“We have a president who is too sure of himself,” said Philippe Martinez, the leader of the Confédération Générale du Travail, or C.G.T., France’s second-largest union, after Mr. Macron spoke. “This is serious.”
The protests against retirement at 64, which brings France more in line with its European neighbors, have been generally peaceful over the past two months even as anger has mounted. But on Wednesday, protesters in Marseille set fire to wooden pallets and tires to block a highway; in Brest, dockers blocked the port; and in Paris, demonstrators from the C.G.T. union occupied a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées.
Over the past week, violent nighttime clashes between police and protesters have erupted in several cities, including Paris, where there have been repeated chases between riot police firing tear gas and small groups of protesters lighting trash fires.
“When groups, as they have this week, use violence without any rules because they are not happy with something, then that is no longer democracy,” Mr. Macron said. At a time when “the United States lived what it lived at the Capitol,” he continued, “we respect, listen, we try to advance for the sake of the country, but we cannot accept insurrectionists or factions.”
Under the French system, today’s workers pay the pensions of a growing number of retirees, who now live longer. Over the medium term, the financial viability of this arrangement appears doubtful, even if Mr. Macron has not convinced French people of the urgency of the changes.
Mr. Macron, 45, noted that there were 10 million pensioners when he started working, there are 17 million now and soon there will be 20 million. Failure to raise the retirement age, he said, would be tantamount to “making our children pay because today you refuse to act with clarity and courage.”
His stance on Wednesday — that his course was the only responsible one for the country and generations to come — was a return to arguments Mr. Macron made last year. In recent months, the official narrative on the pension system has at different times been about justice, parlous public finances, even a left-wing program. The result has been confusion and growing resistance.
Source : Nytimes
