France is preparing for a “hellish Thursday“, as officials say most trains will be cancelled, with flights also being affected and Paris’ subway heavily disrupted, as part of a nationwide strike against a wildly unpopular pension reform plan.
The proposed reforms, which are currently being debated in parliament, would increase the minimum amount of contributions needed to get a full pension and raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
According to opinion polls, a vast majority of French oppose the planned reform.
The Thursday strike will be the first time in 12 years that all unions in France have come together since the retirement age was raised from 60 to 62.
“It’ll be a hellish Thursday,” Transport Minister Clement Beaune told broadcaster France 2 on Tuesday, urging all those who could, to work from home.
The public transportation company in Paris, RATP, issued a warning that services will be curtailed due to the closure of three metro lines and the partial operation of ten others.
Only two automated lines will be used for services, but they may become crowded, it said.
National railway operator SNCF reported that numerous high-speed trains will be out of service elsewhere in the nation, with only one in five continuing on some routes. Most slow intercity trains would be stopped too.
The education ministry has stated that up to 70 per cent of teachers in nursery and primary schools may also choose not to report for duty.
As per opinion polls, almost two-thirds of French citizens are against raising the retirement age. This is despite the fact that the country is still recovering from the Covid outbreak and that there is high inflation.
The most prolonged strike on the Paris transportation system in thirty years followed President Emmanuel Macron’s last effort at pension reform in 2019, which was abandoned a year later when Covid struck Europe.
The 45-year-old centrist made the problem the centrepiece of his successful re-election campaign the previous year, citing predictions that the system would have a significant shortfall by the end of the decade.
