Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille … This Thursday, they were several hundred thousand in the streets to demonstrate against the pension reform project, wanted by the government. At the call of the unions, more than a million people walked the streets of the cities, estimates the government. A figure that climbs to nearly 2 million demonstrators, according to a count of the CGT.
“The subject is not mobilization”
A mobilization worthy of November 1995, when France had experienced three weeks of strike. In question, the Juppé plan, which notably wanted an extension of the contribution period for public service employees, from 37.5 to nearly 40 annuities.
Nearly 28 years later, it is again a pension reform that is pushing some of the French to demonstrate. “The subject is not mobilization,” said Jean-François Copé at the microphone of Europe 1. The former minister judges that the latter “will remain strong, that there will be strikes”, because the subject of pensions is “an impossible match”, he explains.
Raising wages
“It’s a competition between two states of mind in reality: on the one hand reason, on the other passion”. And to add: “It is a subject on which we cannot discuss, especially in a period like ours where all words are equal”, considers the chosen one.
“But in reality, the numbers are relentless. Anyone in charge sees that. We’re living longer, we’re getting back into working life later. And so, we can’t continue to have a retirement age too low”, concludes Jean-François Copé, even if the latter warns of the need to revalue the work to increase the acceptance of this reform, “necessary”.