By Adam Sarsfield
A recent appeal by the French parliament increased the legal age of retirement from 62 years old to 64 years old, creating a massive amount of chaos and protest across the country. Many citizens take to the streets demanding a repeal of the increase. The protest has been ongoing since early January and there seems to be no budging by either side of the debate over the legal retirement age. The debate began through the assessment of the average pension a citizen of France could receive. Before 2000 France was able to boast the highest rate of workers to pensioners in their country at a staggering 2.1 working persons to 1 retiree and nearing the end of 2020 the French national data logging reported a rate of 1.7 to 1. This seemingly tiny difference holds a much larger impact than expected as this decrease will only go lower with time; as the number of working persons to retire decreases the average cost for pensions increases. This increase in the cost of pensions created a major problem within France’s economy as the national debt increased from 90% of France’s total GDP to 112% of the total. This shift into a 112% use of the national GDP created a need to decrease the debt being created. President Macron’s plan in order to decrease the debt would be to slowly increase the retirement age by three months until the age reaches 64 or 65 depending on the debt in the future. Another major aspect of the protest involves the enactment of Article 49.3, which gives the President the ability to authorize the approval of a bill without a vote on it, however this power has only been used once in France’s history. The issue of the debt and use of Article 49.3, remains a very pressing matter however this new bill in order to slow the rise of cost for retirement was met with numerous protests across the country. The protests have been mostly peaceful however the French police have been using tear gas and riot control tactics which causes the protesters to react with equal violence towards the police.
In my personal opinion, the people of France have a very good reason to be upset by this seemingly small increase in the retirement age. However, the many subtle implications that can be perceived by this change for example that the government is preparing to not increase living wages even with the enormous skyrocket in interest rates and inflation throughout the global economy. Also another issue with the response to the protest is that there is a massive amount of censorship affecting Facebook and Instagram that has blocked any images or videos of the protest. Anyone who uses Instagram can observe the censorship simply by going onto Instagram and typing in France. There is absolutely no mention of the protest in any regard. I believe these protest are only the beginning across the world as the economy is going through a recession making money less valuable which is only the start for more countries to require distinct changes to their policies in order to account for this decrease in value.