France on Thursday faced another day of protests and strikes against the government's pension reform raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030.

 

The plan to make the French work for longer also requires 43 years of work to earn a full pension at 64 - otherwise, workers would have to wait until they turn 67. 

This rule is to kick in by 2027, while the statutory retirement age will go up by three months each year, starting in September, eventually reaching the 64 years mark by the end of the decade.

 

The government says the reform is needed to make the French pension system financially sustainable as the nation's population ages. But the opposition and unions are calling for other options, such as making companies and the wealthy pay more to finance the pension system.

The uproar in France is not only about the Governments pension reform plans. 

That was just the drop that made the bucket overflow.

And of course the mainstream media when reporting about the strikes and manifestations (which are too massive to be ignored) only address the pension reform issue, resulting in the usual 'those lazy Frenchmen' comments by those that do not see the bigger picture.

5 hours ago, Social Media said:

raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64

Cobblers you can retire any age you like, maybe let people know

5 hours ago, Red Phoenix said:

And of course the mainstream media when reporting about the strikes and manifestations (which are too massive to be ignored) only address the pension reform issue, resulting in the usual 'those lazy Frenchmen' comments by those that do not see the bigger picture.

And what on earth is the "bigger picture". When faced with a life expectancy that increases by one year every four the french pension system, which relies on contributions from the [active] workers to pay the pensions of the retired,  will soon face bankruptcy if nothing is being done to balance the books. Also France. being one of the most indebted countries in Europe, Macron has to show to the financial markets his determination to control public debt. So he had to chose between reducing pensions, increasing contributions of the active population, or raising the retirement age. For anyone in his right mind the latter was the most sensible decision to take.

If you click on the link https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/06/pension-reform-in-france-which-countries-have-the-lowest-and-highest-retirement-ages-in-eu it shows a table of Retirement ages across a number of European Countries (why not all I don’t know, I thought maybe just EU countries but Switzerland is in the list) and the move to 64 would see France becoming top of that list with the Germans at 63.7 in second place. 
 

Wasn’t the national retirement age for Greece 55 before they had their financial meltdown? It’s now 62.