A dozen youth organisations marched through Paris on Saturday afternoon against the government’s pension age hike from 62 to 64, following last Thursday’s mass demonstrations in all French towns and cities by millions of workers, trade unions, students and youth.
Actively supported by the left-wing France Unbowed party, the marchers shouted: ‘Resistance!’, ‘We are here, even if Macron does not want it’.
France Unbowed (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon congratulated the demonstrators, saying that 150,000 people had turned out.
Speaking to the crowds, the former presidential candidate slammed Emmanuel Macron for ‘wanting to transform our entire existence into merchandise (…) dirty everything, spoil everything, reduce everything, quantify everything.’
The turnout was also praised by Colin Champion, president of the La Voix Lycéenne union, while L’Alternative, another student union, welcomed ‘a very massive youth turnout’.
‘We realised that the young people wanted to put themselves forward, that they felt the first concerned,’ said Philippe Juraver, one of the LFI representatives told French news agency AFP on Saturday.
Young people fear ‘a reduction in the number of jobs’, said Noémie Stickan, representative of the FIDL high school student union adding that students want ‘to say stop to this anti-social measure’ of the postponement of the retirement age to 64.
‘We are revolted, we want to fight it out, we want to say that we will not be the sacrificial generation,’ Zoé Lorioux-Chevalier, member of Génération.s said.
The march and action came on the heels of last Thursday’s massive protest and strike, when over 1.1 million people took to the streets to oppose President Macron’s move to extend the retirement age to 64 from 62.
According to the interior ministry’s own figures, this was an unexpectedly high turnout.
The youth organisers insisted on Saturday that their action was intended to amplify the union movement, not be counter productive.
‘It’s not at all a question of competition between rallies, it’s complementary,’ insisted Eléonore Schmitt, spokesman for the student union L’Alternative.
Buoyed by last Thursday’s success, French unions have announced their next day of action for 31 January, warning that further mass mobilisations will continue until the government backs down.
‘We will carry on until the reform plan is withdrawn,’ said Marie Buisson, secretary general of the powerful CGT Education union, calling for ‘massive and strong strike action’.
Yvan Ricordeau, leader of the CFDT union, said that ‘as long as reform plans are based on raising the retirement age, unions will mobilise.’
Unions are also planning to hold smaller but frequent protests.
Buisson said the next big protest day will be even bigger than last Thursday’s when 40 per cent of teachers were on strike, 45 per cent of rail workers, half of staff at state-owned utility EDF and most workers at energy giant TotalEnergies.
Meanwhile, Macron has announced that France will boost military spending by more than one-third in the coming years.
Last Friday he said that the planned 2024-2030 budget would adapt the military to the possibility of high-intensity conflicts.
The spending spree is needed to ensure ‘our freedom, our security, our prosperity, our place in the world’, said Macron.
The budget for the period will stand at 413 billion euros ($447bn), up from 295 billion euros ($320bn) in 2019-2025, which means that by 2030 France’s military budget would have doubled since he took power in 2017.
‘As war is changing, France has and will have armies ready for the perils of the century,’ said Macron, speaking at the Mont-de-Marsan airbase in southwestern France. ‘We need to be one war ahead.’
The money would notably go to modernising France’s nuclear arsenal.
‘Nuclear deterrence is an element that makes France different from other countries in Europe. We see anew, in analysing the war in Ukraine, its vital importance,’ he said.
Macron’s speech came as defence ministers from NATO and other countries met at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
Although France is the world’s third-biggest arms exporter and the European Union’s sole nuclear power, it has come under criticism for not sending more weapons to Kiev.
Macron has stepped up supplies since the middle of last year, sending Caesar truck-mounted howitzers and promising AMX-10 RC tank destroyers, but French officials have said operations in Africa and years of chronic under-investment have made it impossible to do more immediately.
- The French branch of Russian-backed TV channel RT will shut down after the French government froze its bank accounts, RT France president and news director Xenia Fedorova announced on Saturday.
‘After five years of relentless efforts, the authorities in power have reached their goal: the closing of RT France,’ she said, slamming it as censorship.
In March last year, RT and fellow Russian outlet Sputnik were banned in the European Union.
But RT France continued to produce content out of its bureau in the western Paris area, which was broadcast in African francophone countries. The channel was also still available online.
RT France’s parent company and main shareholder were included in the ninth round of EU sanctions against Russia, which was adopted in December.
After that, the French state froze the organisation’s finances.
‘The General Directorate of the Treasury has decided to freeze RT France’s bank accounts, making it impossible to continue our activity,’ Fedorova said.
She added that about 123 employees, including 77 journalists, likely won’t be paid in January and will lose their jobs.
On Saturday Moscow pledged to fight back.
‘Blocking RT France’s account will lead to retaliatory measures against French media in Russia. They will be very noticeable, if the French authorities do not stop intimidating Russian journalists,’ the Russian foreign ministry said.
- Burkina Faso’s military government has told France it wants its troops stationed in the country to leave within a month.
‘The Burkinabe government last Wednesday denounced the accord which has governed, since 2018, the presence of French armed forces on its territory,’ AIB said, adding that authorities had given France a month to complete its pull-out.
A source close to the government clarified it was ‘not the severance of relations with France. The notification only concerns military cooperation agreements.’
France has 400 special forces soldiers stationed in Burkina purportedly to battle an Islamist insurgency, but relations have deteriorated in recent months.
France’s preferred option would be to redeploy its forces in the south of neighbouring Niger, where nearly 2,000 French soldiers are already stationed.
The military, led by Captain Ibrahim Traore, seized power last September in the second coup in the former French colony in eight months.
Traore has been seeking to rekindle ties with Russia since coming to power.
French troops withdrew from Mali last year after a 2020 coup in the former French colony saw its rulers also inch closer to Russia.
Demonstrators gathered in Burkina’s capital Ouagadougou last Friday to demand the French ambassador leave the country and that the French military base there be closed.
Hundreds flocked to a central square carrying placards with slogans such as ‘French army, get out’.
Mohamed Sinon, one of the main leaders of the collective that called the demonstration, said it was to show support for leader Traore and the security forces fighting jihadists.
‘We are a pan-African movement and we want cooperation between Burkina Faso and Russia, but also the strengthening of friendship and of cooperation with Guinea and Mali,’ he added.
Protesters carried huge posters showing the presidents of Mali and Guinea – both of whom also came to power in coups – as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In October, anti-France demonstrators gathered outside the country’s embassy in Ouagadougou and the French cultural centre was attacked.
Another demonstration outside the embassy followed in November, and earlier this month, the French foreign ministry said it had been asked to replace its ambassador Luc Hallade after he ruffled feathers with his reports alleging a worsening security situation in Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso on Saturday thanked its northern neighbour Mali for its help in the recent rescue of 66 women, children and babies from suspected jihadists after a week of captivity.
Government spokesman Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo also told RTB state television that all of the 66 freed captives, who included 27 minors and four babies, were doing well.
‘All arrangements have been made for them to regain serenity and after all that, we can consider their return to their respective families,’ he added.
The captives were abducted by suspected jihadists in the northern Sahel region a little over a week ago.
During his televised interview, Ouedraogo paid tribute to ‘brother country’ Mali, saying it had monitored their shared border ‘so as to be able to follow the trail of the kidnappers and the women’.
Both countries are fighting a long-running jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and forced millions to flee their homes.
Earlier on Saturday, several hundred people demonstrated in two major northern towns, Djibo and Kongoussi, both of which have been subjected to jihadist raids and a blockade that has made it increasingly difficult for them to receive supplies.
The demonstrators called for fresh supplies and thanked security forces for rescuing the women.
The demonstrations came just two days after a series of attacks across the north of the country claimed the lives of around 30 people, half of whom were members of an auxiliary force supporting the army.
Traore said in December that his aim was to ‘recapture the territory occupied by the hordes of terrorists’.
