France just head of the UK in the race for currency collapse:
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Due to France’s relatively young retirement age, lofty governmental spending on pensions, and high wage replacement rate, they’re now out-earning citizens with jobs as the country’s officials try and make unpopular changes.
Macron failed to raise France’s retirement age to 64.
The Constitutional Council rejected opposition calls for a referendum - but it also struck out some aspects of the reforms, citing legal flaws.
Following the council’s ruling, protesters set fires across Paris and 112 people were arrested.
Twelve days of demonstrations have been held against the reforms since January.
Unions have vowed to continue opposing the reforms, and called on workers across France to return to the streets on 1 May.
However, the report notes that this is no new fad. In the five decades between 1970 and 2020, the cumulative increase in median income for working-aged French citizens between the ages of 18 and 64 rose by about 100%, while it increased by more than 160% for the nation’s retirees.
France’s new prime minister, Francois Bayrou, announced Tuesday the renegotiation of a contested plan raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, in a crucial move to seek more stability for his minority government.
France has now gone through three governments in the past year, each one effectively failing to clear the hurdle of passing a fiscally responsible budget. Major stumbling block here is pension reform – two years ago a proposal to raise the headline pension age met with widespread protest. Since then various governments have tried to find ways to offset the pension burden – one notable strategy is to drop the inflation indexation of pensions (a key pillar of the forthcoming budget process is likely to centre on not indexing government disbursements for a year).
President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 unleashed months of mass protests from January to June 2023 that damaged his leadership.
Vive la anciennes!
Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons ! Marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!
I had a client who had a holiday home in France. It was in a smallish town that had a fully functioning railway station with just a few trains a day. The town also had a fully equipped major hospital. His neighbour was a farmer who, one day, sprained his back. He could walk but was in pain. A couple of hours after phoning the surgery he had a visit from a doctor and nurse. Any attempt to reduce the services were met with immediate opposition. This was during the period we were in the EU when we had reciprocal health agreement with other EU countries. If he needed hospital treatment he would go to his French home and get treated immediately.
The country is heavily unionised and if there was a strike the union officials were heavily criticism if the riot police did not attend as this indicated that the strikers were not being taken seriously.
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The scale of the protests will help the new prime minister gauge the depth of widespread discontent across the country. Authorities are planning to deploy more than 80,000 members of the security forces and 24 armored vehicles across the country, an impressive show of force rarely seen since the 2018-2019 Yellow Jackets protests