The French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed to move the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. The French populace is not in agreement with this policy change and is organizing protests. These protesters are targeting railways and other public transit and stopping them from working.

Despite these massie nationwide protests Emmanuel Macron has not backed down from his decision to raise the national retirement age. In order to pass this piece of legislation the French President used a special constitutional power. This made it to where the french legislature didn’t get to vote on this reform, therefore compromising the French process of democracy as well. One group of people protesting are French sanitation workers causing garbage to fill the streets of Paris. The protesters have also managed to shut down world attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and The Louvre Museum.

The French government states that they will go into deficit because of a lower number of young people than retired people and will not be able to afford the pensions. The French government also has heavily stressed their worries that these protests are likely to turn violent and be a threat to the safety of their people and police officers responding to these protests. The French Interior Minister said that “radical” individuals could latch on to these protests in France to “destroy, to injure and to kill police officers and gendarmes. Their goals have nothing to do with the pension reform. Their goals are to destabilize our republican institutions and bring blood and fire down on France,”. While some protestors claim that the police have been using excessive force against protesters. Lucie Henry, a protester, said that by going around parliament for this reform, Macron “has set everyone on fire.” and “What adds fuel to the fire is the behavior of the government, the police violence in particular,”

The French are having nationwide issues that seem like they will last a while as the government refuses to back down and is only amping up the protestors and their fight against this reform.