Tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Thursday in France to protest against the government’s controversial pension reform project during a fifth day of mobilization, marked by strikes, particularly in the aviation sector.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, this fifth day of mobilization, after those of January 19 and 31 and February 7 and 11, brought together some 440,000 participants in France, while the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), counted 1 .3 million people. The Parisian procession gathered 300,000 people according to the CGT, 37,000 according to the prefecture.
Unlike previous days of mobilization, the disruptions are greater in the air, with flight cancellations and delays, than in the rail.
In the energy sector, several EDF (Electricité de France) nuclear reactors carried out load reductions totaling just over 3,000 MW, the equivalent of three nuclear reactors, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, according to the CGT and EDF.
This new day of demonstration comes on the eve of the return to the Senate of the text debated since February 6 in the National Assembly, where the executive is deprived of an absolute majority. During the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the government suffered a first setback in the lower house of parliament with the rejection by the deputies of article 2 of the reform concerning the “index of seniors” in companies.
During the last day of demonstrations, Saturday, the first to be held on a weekend, some 963,000 people had beaten the pavement everywhere in France, according to the Ministry of the Interior, against 2.5 million according to the unions.
The mobilization against the pension reform, which plans in particular to push back the legal retirement age to 64, continues with a new day of strikes and demonstrations announced by the unions for Tuesday, March 7, where they threaten to bring the country “to a standstill”.