The French government has defended this Sunday that a majority of French people consider a reform of the public pension system as «necessary», claiming that there is fear of imbalance and a loss of strength of the same.
The spokesman for the French government, Olivier Véran, said that opinion polls show that «a large majority of French people consider that a reform is necessary», as reported by BFM TV.
According to Véran, «a part of the French is still mobilized because they do not want (…) to work little by little for longer», a fact that, according to the Government, does not imply that they do not want reforms.
He also pointed out that without any kind of reform it is impossible to achieve «a balanced budget in 2030», a fact rejected by the citizens of France.
In this sense, the Prime Minister of France, Élisabeth Borne, has communicated in the last hours with some unions, which have warned her with a «hardening of the tone» if the Executive approves its project «by force».
«All the unions in all sectors have said the same thing from the beginning.» These mobilizations are presented as an opportunity given to the Government to withdraw its project and to start negotiations on the defense and financing of our existing schemes,» said the secretary general of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) of the city of Versailles, Matthieu Bolle Reddat.
According to Bolle Reddat, the unions would be ready to «blockade the country» if the government maintains its position, as reported by the aforementioned channel.
The statements by the government and the unions come a day after thousands of people took to the streets across the country to protest against the pension reform planned by the government of Emmanuel Macron.
Some 963,000 people reportedly demonstrated Saturday in France against pension reform, 93,000 of them in Paris, according to the Interior Ministry. These figures are higher than those of Tuesday’s demonstration, when authorities counted 757,000 demonstrators nationwide. The CGT, for its part, claims that there were more than 2.5 million demonstrators in the country, of whom 500,000 are said to have gathered in the French capital.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
