PARIS—French President
Emmanuel Macron
is pressing ahead with his plan to raise the country’s retirement age despite opposition from unions and lawmakers, a decisive test of the centrist leader’s ability to enact his pro-business agenda during his second term in office.
Mr. Macron’s government is expected to unveil details of the proposed pension overhaul on Tuesday. The move risks sparking a new wave of protests in France, where tensions have been simmering for months because of rising food and fuel prices. Unions have already called for strikes and pledged to stage nationwide protests this month to block the new measures.
The proposed overhaul has become a symbol of Mr. Macron’s efforts to make France’s economy more competitive while maintaining its welfare state. Revamping the country’s pension system was one the main planks of his campaign platform when he was re-elected president in April. The French leader plans to increase the age of retirement by two or three years, from 62 years old to 64 or 65, because he says it is the only way to preserve the pension system without raising taxes or increasing the country’s debt.
French union leaders, who met with the government last week, say raising the country’s retirement age is unnecessary and would penalize people who started working at a young age.
“We will do everything to force the government to back down,” said
Laurent Berger,
the general secretary of the CFDT, France’s largest union, in an interview with French daily Le Parisien published Sunday. “There will be no deal with the CFDT.”
Unions say the government should focus instead on helping people age 50 and older to hold on to their jobs to improve the ratio of workers to retirees. France has a higher unemployment rate for seniors than most other countries in Europe, according to the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat.
In France, like many other countries, current workers…
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