Protests and riots intensify across France over President Macron’s decision on pension reform

France protests, riots: Amid widespread anger, a series of riots and protests have grown tense in France to oppose President Emmanuel Macron’s decision on pension reform.

The protesters have time and again claimed that the government has raised the state pension age without a parliamentary vote, which has now become a cause of major concern over growing unrest in the country, news agency Asian News International (ANI) said in a report quoting Al Jazeera.

The agitators have taken to the streets of Paris to oppose the reform and multiple refinery strikes are also taking place across France. The escalating unrest and the mounting trash piles on Paris’ streets as a result of refuse workers joining in the action, have now put Macron in a tough state.

Macron pushed the unpopular pension reform scheme which proposed to raise the retirement age for most workers to 64 from 62 without a vote of lawmakers in the National Assembly on Thursday, defying mass protests throughout the country, ANI report further said quoting The New York Times.

Macron’s decision prompted raucous protests inside the assembly chamber, where opposition lawmakers sang the French national anthem and banged on their desks.

The upper house of Parliament, the Senate, approved the Bill on Thursday morning. But in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house, where Macron’s party and its allies hold only a slim majority, did not have enough votes to pass the Bill.

Macron said France’s pension system is in “an increasingly precarious state” because retirees are living longer and their numbers are growing faster than those of today’s workers, whose payroll taxes finance the system.

But his plan has angered a society that reveres retirement and a generous balance between work and leisure. In polls, roughly two-thirds of French people say they disapprove of the plan, as per The New York Times report.

After Macron proposed the pension reform scheme, many angry protesters lit small fires and clashed with police clad in riot gear at the Place de la Concorde in central Paris on Thursday.

With ANI Inputs