Explained | Why is France seeing widespread protests over Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms? Premium

Unrest and public anger intensified after the French President rushed a reform in the Lower House of Parliament to change the retirement age from 62 to 64 without holding a vote

The story so far: Protesters on Friday, March 17, clashed with the police at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, near the National Assembly (Lower House) building amid growing unrest over the ruling government’s decision to change the state pension age from 62 to 64, meaning people would have to work longer to get a full state pension.

Nationwide demonstrations, which have seen crowds of over a million people and large-scale workers’ strikes since the start of the year, have largely remained fairly peaceful. But on Thursday, March 16, riot police and protesters clashed in the capital after President Emmanuel Macron’s administration used a special provision in the Constitution to push through the contentious pension reform without holding a vote in the National Assembly (where it does not enjoy a majority) as the House plunged into uproar with Opposition politicians singing the French national anthem and holding protest signs in Parliament.

In France, all retirees get a state pension. This is how the system works— mandatory payroll taxes apaid by those currently working fund the pensions of retirees, meaning generations have been able to retire with an assured, state-backed pension. French politicians laud the system for creating “solidarity between the generations”.

Now, the government argues that as life expectancy in France increases and so does its ageing population (meaning more retirees than new entrants into the workforce), the current pension system will fall short in the coming decades. According to the administration’s projections, while there were 2.1 workers putting money into the system for every one retiree in 2000, this figure dropped to 1.7 workers per retiree in 2020, and is expected to further slide to 1.2 by 2070.

The government says the measure to gradually raise the legal retirement age by three months every year, till it reaches 64 by 2030, is “indispensable” in order to balance the pension system and keep it financially viable. While announcing the last-minute decision to use special provision 49:3 of the Constitution to pass the bill without voting in the National Assembly, French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne said: “We cannot gamble on the future of our pensions. That reform is necessary.”

The change in retirement age from the current 62 to 64 means that people will have to work longer or contribute payroll taxes for a greater number of years to get a full state pension. By this logic of a phased increase of three months every year till 2030, those who were born in 1961 and were due to retire this year will have to work an additional three months in order to get a full pension. Those born in 1968 will have to be 64 and completed 43 years of work when they retire in order to get their dues.

There are exceptions, however. Those starting work between the ages of 14 to 19 will be able to seek early retirement, as will public workers engaged in physically or mentally arduous jobs. The government also says it will put in place a ‘seniors’ index’ to check if companies are making progress in hiring and training seniors so that they don’t get left out as the retirement age increases.