Good morning. Since Emmanuel Macron forced through his plans to raise the pension age in France last week, public dismay over the change to a fiercely protected feature of French social policy has been bubbling. Last night, at the end of the ninth day of nationwide protests since January, that anger reached boiling point.
The most visible symbol of the tensions came in video from Bordeaux, where the doors of the city hall were set alight after a day of intensifying action on the streets. The blaze was quickly put out by firefighters. But all over the country, the unpopularity of Macron’s plans was plainly visible. The authorities put the number of people on the streets at 1.1m, while unions said it was about 3.5m. Either way, the severity of the clashes between protesters and the police – and scale of the wider movement – suggest that the fight against the reforms is far from over.
