After weeks of protests and outrage over his unpopular plans to raise the retirement age, French President Emmanuel Macron handed himself 100 days to heal the country on Monday, ordering his cabinet to initiate discussions with unions on various problems.
Macron asked his prime minister to address labor conditions, peace and order, education, and health in a televised speech two days after signing into law a two-year retirement age raised to 64.
Macron stated, “On July 14, we must be able to take stock,” alluding to Bastille Day, France’s national day and a political milestone.
“We have ahead of us 100 days of appeasement, unity, ambition and action for France,” he said.
Macron has bet his reformer reputation on pension adjustments, which he argued were necessary to avoid billions of euros in deficit by the decade’s end.
However, his inability to get parliamentary support for the reform forced him to use exceptional constitutional powers to drive it through.
He regretted that the public did not accept the amendments on Monday.
Is this reform accepted? No way. I regret not reaching a consensus after months of talks. “Learn everything from that,” he said.
As Macron began his speech, protesters around the country banged pots and pans and set garbage bins on fire in Paris.
Macron said the government should tighten immigration regulations and improve working conditions, but he provided few details.
Laurent Berger, head of France’s largest union, the CFDT, claimed Macron’s speech was empty and failed to address the nation’s fury soon afterward.
“There’s just a sort of emptiness, there is nothing in there, we expected something else,” he added.
After a time of “decency” to quell workers’ wrath, unions would talk to the government after Labour Day on May 1.
Marine Le Pen called Macron “stuck in a parallel world.”
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