The French government spokesman, Olivier Véran, rejected on Tuesday the unions' proposal to resort to independent mediation on the pension reform. "You don't necessarily need mediation to talk," said Véran, who made it clear that the reform cannot be renegotiated and that, if there are talks, they will be direct and on other issues such as the working conditions of the most veteran workers or remuneration .
The spokesman's words were fully in line with what President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised interview last week and during a press conference in Brussels. The unions associated a possible mediation with a pause in the process to promulgate the law on the reform, only pending its legal analysis by the Constitutional Council. The Government has not wanted to fall into the trap of accepting a mediation that implicitly meant admitting that the project could be reconsidered.
The inflexibility of the Executive occurred on the tenth day of mobilizations, which registered a clear downward trend in terms of protesters and strikers. The monitoring of the strikes was much lower in education, in the railways and in public transport.
The marches in Paris and other cities were less numerous. In the capital, 93,000 people participated, according to the prefecture, and 450,000 according to the CGT. The numbers are always that different. The Ministry of the Interior deployed 5,500 police officers and gendarmes to prevent a repeat of riots as serious as those that occurred on Thursday of last week.
In both Paris and Bordeaux there were incidents due to the presence of violent demonstrators, the black blocs, who broke some shop windows and burned street furniture, in addition to confronting the police. The situation was pretty much under control by French riot standards.
“We are going to continue until we force Macron to negotiate,” Jacques, a 62-year-old computer scientist who attended the Paris march, told this newspaper.
Why don't the French accept delaying retirement, as the Spanish, Italians or Germans have already done?
–Perhaps because we want to live differently.
"In Spain the Government was much more intelligent," said Denis, 61, head of the after-sales service of a company. He spoke with all the social agents, with the people, he explained. He did things better so that the people would accept him. Here, Macron has taken us for idiots. No nation is stupid." “What is certain is that Macron has ruined his mandate,” Denis added. Any other reform will be blocked. He has lost all his credibility."
For Nadège, a 36-year-old primary school teacher, Macron has given "the false pretext" of financial equilibrium, when "there are dozens of ways to get that money without taking it from people by delaying retirement." According to her, the stubborn French resistance is explained by a very deep awareness: "These are rights that were the result of very important social movements, and people do not want to give them up."
