PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that he hopes to break the deadlock in the country’s pension reform dispute, though he warned that the pension system must be balanced out of “responsibility to the future generation.”
Macron was quoted by government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye after a cabinet meeting on Monday. She added that Macron hopes a solution will be found at talks beginning on Tuesday, with the new bill to be voted on in the National Assembly ahead of March’s local elections.
Ndiaye said that the government is open to suggestion from social partners.
A particular sticking point is a planned raise of the standard age of retirement on full pension from 62 to 64, which the government hopes will plug the large financing gap in the pension system. Observers predict that the government will make concessions on this point.
The strike has crippled France for more than a month now. Monday again saw limited public transport service across the country, with trains packed now that many have returned from holiday. According to state-owned rail company SNCF, 36 per cent of train drivers were refusing to work on Monday.
Students joined the action on Monday, blockading some universities. Among their grievances is the fact that important exams have been scheduled to go ahead despite the transport strikes. The exams had been postponed in December because of the strikes.
Lawyers, too, were striking on Monday. The government hopes its pension reform will end the fragmentation of pensions into 42 different funds and introduce a universal points system.
Meanwhile, France’s culture minister will decide this week whether to strip a writer accused of seducing children of a state pension.
Award-winning essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being investigated by French police after the publication of a book detailing his relationship with a girl of 14 over three decades ago.
Matzneff, 83, who won the prestigious Renaudot prize in 2013, has never made any secret of his preference for adolescent girls and boys.
In the mid-1970s, he published a notorious essay called “Les Moins de Seize Ans” (“Those Less than 16”) in which he recounted his “conquests”.
The French Culture Minister Franck Riester is considering depriving Matzneff of cash from a hardship fund from its National Books Centre (CNL) for elderly writers in financial straits, his officials said.
Matzneff received around 8,000 euros ($8,900) from the fund last year, the centre said, and up to 160,000 euros since 2002, according to a French Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche.
The case has again shone a light on what many see as an overly permissive attitude towards harassment and assaults in France.
The French film establishment has been rocked by accusations against directors Roman Polanski and Luc Besson, while star Adele Haenel said she was harassed by the director of her first film when she was 12. — AFP
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