Paris (EFE).- The protests against the pension reform return to the French streets today, with a new national day of strikes and demonstrations that seek to influence the debate that the National Assembly will hold on Thursday.
This is the fourteenth national protest that the unions have called together since mid-January, which have not been able to avoid the approval of the reform in April, although by decree of the Government of President Emmanuel Macron and without a parliamentary vote, since the Executive did not have the necessary majority in the National Assembly.
The last protest took place on May 1, International Labor Day, in which there was a higher level of violence by minority groups, especially in Paris, for which the Ministry of the Interior has prepared a deployment of 11,000 agents, 4,000 in Paris alone.
There are 250 demonstrations called throughout the country, for which the authorities anticipate the participation of up to 600,000 people, although strikes in strategic sectors such as transport are only expected to be notable in aviation, since the railway will be less affected.
Canceled 33% of flights in Orly
33% of the flights have been canceled at the Parisian Orly airport and 20% at those of Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes, representing several hundred flights, and others that transit could also be affected through French airspace.
The reform raised the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and increased the contribution period required to have a full pension from 42 to 43 years.
Today’s protest seeks to put pressure on the plenary session of the Assembly on Thursday, when the deputies are scheduled to examine a bill from a minority opposition group, LIOT -of the center-right and regionalist-, which seeks to annul the reform and which does not has virtually no chance of prospering.
However, last week and during its examination in commission, the block that supports Macron managed to empty the content of the bill.
And, although the opposition intends to reactivate it, the president of the National Assembly, the Macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet, has anticipated that she will resort to a constitutional article to prevent it from being put to a vote.
The presidents of six opposition parliamentary groups, including LIOT, warned the government and Braun-Pivet that if the measure cannot be voted on, it will be a “denial of democracy” and a “dangerous precedent.”
“A new denial of democracy can only arouse aggravated disaffection towards our institutions,” they warned in a forum published by the newspaper Le Monde.