Paris, April 17. 64% of French people are in favor of the continuation of protests and mobilizations against the pension reform and 45% want the movement to harden, according to a poll published on Monday.
The reform was enacted in the early hours of last Saturday, hours after the Constitutional Council gave its backing to the most important elements of the measure, including raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. .
However, the poll carried out by the demoscopic company Elabe for the BFM channel indicates that 69% of French people are still opposed to the reform, a figure which has remained stable between 65 and 72% since its presentation in January.
The survey, carried out among 1,003 people last Saturday and Sunday, when the reform had already been promulgated, shows that the percentage of French people who want the protest to harden (45%), has increased by 5 points over the last three weeks, while those who prefer that they conclude have lost 2 points to 35%.
President Emmanuel Macron will address the country on television tonight at 8:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), in an attempt to calm the atmosphere and seek greater collaboration on other less controversial reforms, but opposition leaders don’t seem ready to give in. .
Macron “is facing a country that he himself has fractured,” Socialist Party First Secretary Olivier Faure told the Senate TV channel, to which he insisted the president “didn’t understand that it is not possible to continue without retreating in the pension reform.
La France Insoumise MP Clémentine Autain, said she hopes “the president will land” in the reality that “French people don’t want to turn the best two years of retirement into the worst two years of work”.
In an interview with RMC, Autain denounced what he considers to be the dubious legitimacy of the reform, since the government used the accelerated parliamentary procedure and the National Assembly was unable to vote on the bill, in under a constitutional article. “It’s a minority that imposed the law,” he said.
The inter-union coordination of eight major workers’ organizations is meeting today to discuss new mobilizations against the pension reform.
For now, the unions have called for a massive mobilization for May Day. ECE
rcf/ft