The angry protests continue. Opponents of the pension reform, enacted on April 15, met on Tuesday June 6 for a 14th day of mobilization in the streets of France. The gatherings are expected to bring together up to 600,000 people across France.
In a bid to put pressure on the French Parliament, the trade unions called on citizens to come together on Tuesday for a 14th day of strikes and demonstrations against the pension reform despite the promulgation of the law in mid-April by Emmanuel Macron, with some 250 actions planned across France.
These unions will also hold a press briefing in front of the National Assembly, to symbolically mark the link with Thursday, during which a bill from the Liot group aimed at repealing the decline in the effective age of departure to retirement and proposing the holding of a conference on the financing of the retirement system will be examined.
In addition, the first two decrees implementing the reform have already been published on Sunday in the French Official Journal, including the one gradually raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years old.
It should be remembered that the French, since the announcement of the reform, have categorically rejected the idea of pushing back the legal retirement age. According to an IFOP poll carried out for the Journal de Dimanche, 57% of the latter declare that they support or have sympathy for the strike movement and demonstrations held today.
According to a note from territorial intelligence, the gatherings should bring together between 400,000 and 600,000 people throughout France, including 40,000 to 70,000 in Paris alone. The figures announced are, indeed, high, however, they are far from reaching those of the demonstration of March 7, 2023 which brought together 1.28 million French people, including 81,000 in the capital.
At 5 p.m. Paris time, 208,355 demonstrators have already marched throughout France, according to the Fig Data statement based on figures from the prefectures.
For this June 6, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin announced the mobilization of 11,000 gendarmes and police officers, including 4,000 in the capital in order to ” to ensure the security of demonstrations and guarantee the right to demonstrate“.
In all, 11,000 police and gendarmes will be deployed on Tuesday, including 4,000 in Paris to ensure the security of the demonstrations and guarantee the right to demonstrate. Thank you to our law enforcement.
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) June 4, 2023
Through this action, Darmanin also anticipates the presence of “members of the ultra left from abroad”. For this, ” 17 administrative bans from the territory have already been taken in order to prevent these individuals from joining the processions and, if necessary, to facilitate their arrest“, he indicated.
As for transport and contrary to previous events, traffic should only be very slightly disrupted on all railway lines, underground or on the surface. On the other hand, many airlines had to cancel flights scheduled for this Tuesday to and from France due to the protests, including Royal Air Maroc.