“You teach me, I am in shock”. Franck had barely arrived in front of the Paris town hall when the long-awaited news fell. While the demonstrators sang “constitutional or not, this law, we don’t want it”, “we will go as far as withdrawal” or even “outside Macron and his 49.3”, the Constitutional Council validated the central measure of the reform : the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64 years. “I expected it like many people, but will continue and it will get even more tense”, he says while a few meters away, Ambra and Rose, in their twenties, are “hyper disappointed”. “It’s scandalous, they really don’t care about us”, enrages the first. “We expected it, it will revive the movement, not finished we still have a lot to tell, we will continue until the withdrawal, we must not give them reason”, adds her friend.
Several hundred young people, who had demonstrated in the afternoon against the pension reform from Saint-Lazare station, had joined the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville earlier. A procession of some 500 students and employees set off at the start of the afternoon from Saint-Lazare station in a good-natured atmosphere. On the forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville, they were more than 3,000 to shout their disappointment, before taking the direction of the Place de la Bastille in an atmosphere a bit more tense. Vélib burned, garbage cans on fire, a few incidents took place in the Marais district.
The Constitutional Council on Friday validated most of the pension reform, while rejecting some measures of the government project such as the creation of a “senior index”. At the same time, the Elders rejected a request for a shared initiative referendum (RIP) submitted by the left. A second request, filed later, must however be the subject of a new decision on May 3.