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The 30-year battle to reform France’s pension system

France is bracing for a day of transport chaos Thursday as workers go on strike over President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64.

Successive governments of both the left and right have done battle with the country’s famously militant trade unions over how to keep the debt-laden pension system afloat.

AFP looks at how they fared:

– 1993: first reform –

In 1993, the centre-right government of prime minister Edouard Balladur increases the number of years of work necessary for a full private-sector pension to 40 from 37.5.

Balladur’s government also changes the way pensions are calculated, basing them on the worker’s 25 best-paid years instead of 10 previously.

There is little resistance to the plan, which skirts the more sensitive issue of public-sector pensions.

– 1995: workers’ revolt –

In November 1995, France grinds to a halt over centre-right prime minister Alain Juppe’s attempts to reform public-sector pensions, mainly by requiring 40 years of work as in the private sector.

Trade unions call a general strike that cripples train and metro services for three weeks. The public sides massively with the strikers, forcing the government into a climbdown.

– 2003: mass protests –

Eight years later, more than a million people take to the streets when centre-right prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin unveils plans to make state employees work for 40 years for a full pension, and to shift everyone progressively to 42 years.

Raffarin refuses to back down, and after weeks of demonstrations and strikes the bill passes parliament.

– 2007: Sarkozy does deal –

Right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy also takes on public-sector unions when he comes to power, vowing to scrap the more advantageous pension schemes enjoyed by civil servants and other public workers.

Train drivers go on strike but eventually agree to work the same number of years as everyone else after winning a range of concessions on how their pensions are calculated.

– 2010: from 60 to 62 years –

Sarkozy runs into much greater opposition three years later when he moves to raise the legal retirement age from 60 to 62.

France’s oil refineries are blockaded during two months of rolling strikes and protests but the resistance peters out after parliament adopts the bill.

– 2014: 43 years of contributions –

France’s Socialists also tackle the pensions deficit after Francois Hollande comes to power, gradually increasing the number of years of contributions required for a full pension to 43.

– 2019: Longest-ever rail strike –

Macron’s first attempt to deliver on his campaign promise to overhaul the pension system sparks the longest strike in the history of the national rail operator, SNCF.

Macron proposes to replace dozens of separate regimes with a single system and to push back the retirement age for most people to 64. The reform is put on ice during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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