PRESIDENT SARKOZY’S government insists there will be no backing down. France’s pension reform will go ahead and the retirement age will rise from 60 to 62, despite a two-million-strong turnout at angry demonstrations in Paris and 200 other sites throughout the country yesterday. The government’s bid to restore the pension budget to the black by 2018 also involves increasing to 41 – by six months – the number of working years necessary to qualify for a full pension, and a graduated rise in civil servants’ pension contributions from 7.85 per cent of salary to the 10.55 per cent paid by private sector employees.
The marches were an impressive mobilisation, doubling the turnout achieved in June, reflecting both the widespread opposition to the measures – polls show two-thirds against them – and deep hostility to Mr Sarkozy whose own approval ratings hover in the mid-30s. But the package, which went to the National Assembly yesterday, will remain substantially intact although there have been hints at concessions for people in arduous jobs, those who started work in their teens and those with a mixed record of public and private sector work.
France’s official retirement age of 62 will still be among the lowest in Europe where 65 has been the norm for years; and pressure elsewhere, in response to budget tightness and rising life expectancy, is also upwards. The Government has announced here that the State pension will not be paid until the age of 67 from 2021, and 68 from 2028. Greece has recast a generous pension system which allowed many to take retirement before the age of 50 with a common retirement at 65. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel wants Germans to retire at 67 from 2029, while the UK and Spain are also proposing to raise the retirement age.
Significantly, polls also show that about two-thirds of the French public believe their protests will be to no avail, reflecting a more general pessimism in the European workers’ movement at the futility of fighting the current round of pay and public spending cuts, and perhaps also a grudging acceptance of the logic of difficult times. That was not the case in 1995 when the unions forced a full retreat from President Chirac on the same issue. But governments in Greece, Spain, Italy and Romania have so far faced down strikes to impose cutbacks, while in Dublin resistance was most muted. In France, many believe the unions have been going through the motions of protest. Hints yesterday at a general strike have a hollow ring.