France's domestic balancing act

As French President Macron started the process to pass a reform aiming at bringing retirement age from the current 62 to 64 years old, France dove into an outbreak of protests and mass demonstrations marking January and February with five general strikes and an uncountable amount of transport blockages by unions.

The reform, aimed at making France economically credible in the eyes of major European partners like Germany, comes in a country where the State has historically had a strong economic leadership and where liberalism has never really found a place. Macron's bid to change the retirement system by reducing its costs clashes

by Dario Pio Muccilli, Star-Revue foreign desk

with the power of trade unions, which have shown themselves able to stymie the entire country multiple times. Unions have been able to do what their foreign colleagues haven't: create an intergenerational alliance. As other European countries, like Italy, saw the retirement age heightened by governments close to the EU leadership, the unions played the role of saviors of the youth, claiming that the cost of the pensions would have been a burden for the generations to come. In France that’s not the case, high schools, universities, honors colleges: students of any age have joined the demonstrations in Paris’ boulevards. It even happens, like last February 16th in Palaiseau, a small town

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