As you probably know, France is currently living an historic event.
If you’re out of the loop, on Monday, after the use of article 49.3 of the French constitution, allowing the government to put its responsibility on the table in exchange for passing a law without a vote in the Assemblée Nationale, a “motion de censure” was voted. This basically is a question for the elected : “The government engaged its responsibility and forced the adoption of the law : do you want fire it for this ?”. We were only 9 votes away from the Yes, which is actually pretty incredible given that on more than a hundred of use of the 49.3, only ONE “motion de censure” was adopted, and the circumstances in that case were really particular.
The rejection of the “motion de censure” caused an uproar all over the country, and all unions called for a massive national protest on Thursday. But already since Monday, in Paris spontaneous protest are happening every night, with a LOT of arrests of basically anyone in the same street as the police.
Now on the reform itself ; I see a lot of people on Reddit who aren’t French and don’t understand our retirement system, making arguments for the “necessity” of the reform. This is incredibly frustrating to see. I’m currently studying for a Master degree in social law ; I’ve actively studied our current system. Every of my professors, who are all respected researchers, are against the reform, I am against it too. I have a ton of articles explaining the unfairness and uselessness of it to back up my opinion but they’re all in French.
Basically, what you need to know is since boomers did not make enough kids, we’ll have a temporary deficit of about 10 billions a year in about 30 years (at worse) before the system reach equilibrium again. This might sound scary to some of you, but should be studied on perspective with some of the choices our dear Emmanuel made ; like creating subventions for corporations which cost us 150 billions a year, or trying to reinstall mandatory military service, the cost of which, while not evaluated yet, will probably burn our eyes.
So instead of using a literal drop of France’s budget (less than 10% of what he’s willing to give corporations) to save France’s retirement system, Emmanuel has decided that the poorest workers should be the ones to sacrifice their health, their time, to pay for others retirement. Yes, instead He suppressed all the arduousness criteria which allowed hard laborers to retire before the legal age, because you cannot reasonably ask a roofer to work until 62, much less until 64.
But he kept some. Guess which ? Well, of course, cops will keep their special retirement system, because the government needs them to beat protester. Also, parliamentarians will keep their own special retirement plan, of course.
In any case, this is not the end. We will continue to fight until that clown in the Élysée dismisses his minions at least.
I hope Charles III is prepared for his visit in France, because there will be fires in Paris