President Emmanuel Macron’s government “has just set the retirement age at 64. This is both unfair and inequitable,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left La France Insoumise party, said on Twitter. MP Fabien Roussel, the national secretary of the French Communist party, accused the government of “confirming” its intention to “break one of the pillars of our social model”. “The government has opted for brutality,” M Roussel told France Info radio, adding that the pension plan would “spark terrible tensions” ahead of the holiday season.
French conservatives also excoriated the planned overhaul of the pension system, with MP Éric Woerth denouncing the “extraordinarily hypocritical” measures included in the government’s plan.
The reform plan is “very confused” and “badly thought out,” M Woerth told Europe 1 radio on Thursday.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen also ripped apart the proposed pension changes, telling France’s RTL radio she found them “extremely worrying”.
Her former protégé, eurosceptic Florian Philippot, for his part slammed the planned reform as “catastrophic” in a Twitter post.
In a much-anticipated speech that followed days of crippling protests and industrial action, M Philippe outlined an overhaul of France’s costly and complex pension system that he said would be fairer and plug a stubborn deficit in the pension budget.
“The time has come to build a universal pension system,” M Philippe said. “I am determined to see this reform through because I believe it to be fair.”
The PM said the legal retirement age would remain at 62, but workers would be encouraged to work until 64 – the so-called “pivot age” – through a system of bonuses and discounts.
Defying union anger, he said the government would merge the country’s 42 separate state-funded plans into a single, points-based system giving every pensioner the same rights for each euro contributed. The new system will apply to those entering the job market for the first time in 2022.
There will also be a minimum pension of €1,000 (£845) per month for those who work a full career.
But the pro-reform CFDT union, which has until now stayed out of the strikes, said a “red line” has been crossed with the pivot age and called on its members to join mass protests on December 17.
The hard-left CGT union, for its part, accused the Macron government of turning a deaf ear to strikers.
“We’re not at all happy. It’s a joke,” CGT leader Philippe Martinez told LCI television, as the union warned the conditions were in place for the strike action to intensify.
The strongest opposition to the planned reform has come from public workers with so-called “special pension regimes,” including rail employees, dockers and Paris Opera singers who are entitled to retire on a full pension up to a decade earlier than the average worker.
Unions have warned that the week-long strike which has crippled the transport network, closed schools and forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights could run for days, or even weeks, plunging the country into travel misery ahead of Christmas.