Mass protests in France cause disruption an chaos across the country
Demonstration in the streets of Amiens, Northern France against the pensions reform from 19 January. Credit: Guillaume Destombes / Alamy Stock Photo.
27 March 2023
A coalition of France’s major labour unions began a nationwide strike on 07 March to protest the French government’s pension reform. Millions of people have since been mobilised in opposition to the reform during nine nationwide and interunion strikes. The demonstrations have caused major disruptions and increasingly grow violent. An end to the strikes is currently not in sight.
By Marius Merz, LandRisk Junior analyst
The strike has caused major disruptions, particularly affecting the French transport and energy sectors. Workers of French ports have implemented several so-called “dead ports days”, in which port activity was massively disrupted and ships were prevented from docking. Workers in the public transport sector also suspended their work, which disrupted both the national bus and metro networks as well as the French-international rail transport. Workers in the energy union blocked fuel refineries and LNG terminals, effectively blocking the distribution of fuel throughout France. Whilst the government made attempts to unblock some of the fuel refineries, French service stations, particularly in the South-East of the country, still report fuel shortages, which affects private road transport as well as logistic operations.
The French pension reform caused severe political tensions nationally. Fearing the law would not pass the National Assembly, the French government decided to use Article 49.3, allowing the adoption of the law without the Parliaments vote and consent. Whilst the government only barely survived the following parliament’s vote of no confidence, the application of Article 49.3 triggered harsh responses by the public. Violent clashes between protestors and riot police have been recorded in numerous French cities, with several hundreds of police officers getting injured. Growing frustration amongst protestors could be observed in recent days, which has led to an increase of decentralised and partly violent protests that are not under the control of the worker unions anymore.
It remains difficult to predict exactly for how long the strike action will continue. Polls have shown that the majority of the French people still supports the continued protests to force the government to reconsider, even if the legal adoption of the pension reform is officially concluded. The continued public support of the protests was confirmed in the most recent nationwide and inter-union strike day on 23 March, where unions managed to mobilise more than one million protestors across the country. A new major nationwide strike day across all of France was already announced for 28 March.
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