On March 7th 2023, office worker Pauline, and her three flatmates were stuck at home. Metro line 9 which ordinarily takes them from their home in Montreuil, a suburb on the eastern outskirts of central Paris, to work in the centre was closed due to strikes.  According to the Interior Ministry, 1.28 million people took to the streets across France that day to combat the government’s deeply unpopular plan to reform France’s pension system – an initiative which involves raising the retirement age to 64 from 62. These protesters’ efforts were accompanied by a comprehensive cessation of public ..read more

It has been a bad couple of days for English Francophobes. At Twickenham, the English rugby team was squashed by France 10-53, their worst home defeat since the Norman Conquest. It might have been worse. Another converted try and two penalties and it would have been 10-66. Judging by the comments in the right-wing, pro-Brexit press, the summit meeting between President Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak in Paris last Friday was an equally crushing defeat. Banner ad Britain is to pay France almost half a billion pounds over three years to strengthen efforts to halt the armada of small boats ..read more

Three incineration plants outside the capital have been hit by the work stoppages that have left entire pavements covered in black bags and overflowing bins. The capital’s household waste agency Syctom said it has been re-routing dustbin lorries to other storage and treatment sites in the region and has yet to resort to calling in the police. City hall employees have for the last week been picking up rubbish in just half of Paris’s districts. The strike has hit some of the most exclusive areas including the 5th, 6th and 16th arrondissements. Other districts are served by private firms which ha ..read more

Senators passed the reforms by 195 votes to 112, bringing the package another step closer to becoming law. A committee will now hammer out a final draft, which will then be submitted to both the Senate and National Assembly for a final vote. “An important step was taken this evening with a broad vote on the pension reform text in the Senate,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told AFP after the vote, adding that she believed the government had a parliamentary majority to get the reforms passed into law. Should Macron’s government fail to assemble the necessary majority, however, Borne could deplo ..read more

The summit, the first since 2018, will bring together the two former investment bankers for their first bilateral visit after encounters on the sidelines of international events since Sunak came to power in October. Following years of antagonism between London and Paris under Sunak’s former boss and predecessor Boris Johnson, ties have improved markedly in recent months, creating momentum for new initiatives. “We’re renewing things at the moment, putting things back in order, and preparing for the future,” an aide to Macron told reporters on Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The new constru ..read more

In a speech paying tribute to the late Gisele Halimi, a feminist activist and pioneer for reproductive rights, Macron said an amendment to the constitution would be submitted to parliament. “This will enshrine the freedom of women to choose abortion, and be a solemn guarantee that nothing can ever limit or abolish this right because it will have become irreversible,” he said. Banner ad “The rights of women are always a fragile conquest,” Macron said.  France’s National Assembly had in November 2022 already voted in favour of the constitutional change, but without deciding on a timel ..read more

The day would be “historic”, we were told. France would be “blocked” or “closed down” and its economy “brought to its knees”. Demonstrations against pension reform would be the biggest for decades.   Tuesday’s “day of action” – the sixth since the protests began in January – was impressive enough. The official figure for the number of demonstrators nationwide – 1.28 million – WAS the biggest for decades but it was only a little higher than the turnout achieved on January 31st (1.27 million). The unions had hoped for many more. The strikes on the railways and the Paris Metro, in schools an ..read more

France’s Assemblé Nationale voted in favour of a bill protecting children’s image rights on Monday. The representative who put the law forward, Bruno Studer from President Macron’s Renaissance Party, told Le Monde that the goal was to “make parents be responsible” and “show minors that their parents do not have an absolute right on their image”. More broadly, the bill aims to protect children from parents excessively sharing their image “without restraint”. Despite the recently tense climate in France’s parliament due to ongoing debates over pension reform, this bill was voted on unanimously ..read more

Unions have vowed to bring the country to a standstill over the proposed changes, which include raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 and increasing the number of years workers have to make contributions for a full pension. “I call on all the country’s employees, citizens and retirees who are against the pensions reform to come out and protest en masse,” the head of the CFDT union Laurent Berger told the France Inter radio station Monday. READ MORE: ‘France at a standstill’: What to expect from trains, planes and roads during Tuesday’s strikes “The president cannot remain deaf” to the prote ..read more

After five separate days of protests so far this year, this week’s stoppages herald a new phase in the battle between the centrist government and opponents of the changes, which includes an overwhelming majority of French voters. “We always said that we would go into a higher gear if necessary,” the head of the influential hard-left CGT union, Philippe Martinez, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday. “It will be the case on Tuesday.” More than 260 demonstrations are expected nationwide, many in small and medium-sized towns where opposition to the reform is strong, while strikes will ..read more