Hundreds of protesters opposed to Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform have blocked access to the airport terminal 1 charles de gaulle, the largest in France. While there are no affected flights at this time, airlines have announced that will cancel between 15 and 20% of their operations this weekend at different airports in France.
Several travelers have been forced to walk to the airport since access to Terminal 1 by road has been cut off due to a spontaneous demonstration by workers. Dozens of cars are stopped and Paris Police officers have come to the area.
The protesters, against the raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 yearsthey are already unlocking the accesses and gradually leaving the airport in the direction of the Bastille square from Paris, from where a demonstration against the Macron government will start, which is expected to be massive. The authorities wait between 600,000 and 800,000 people throughout France.
[Francia vive una nueva noche de protestas que se salda con un total de 100 detenidos en todo el país]
#LAST MINUTE | The 9th day of the strike begins in France against the pension reform. Paris Charles de Gaulle airport was blocked by protesters at this time. pic.twitter.com/iBbrHSpWZg
– REDRADIOVE (@RedRadioVe) March 23, 2023
Cancellation of flights on the weekend
The General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has announced this Thursday in a statement that it has asked the airlines to reduce their flight schedule for Friday by 30% at Orly airport in Paris and by 20% in those of Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon.
By Saturday, the airlines will have to cancel 15% of the operations in Orly and again 20% in Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon. There are still no indications for Sunday because the air traffic controllers – who are the ones who do the strike, not the company personnel – have to pronounce themselves 48 hours in advance.
This Thursday, coinciding with the ninth day of national mobilization against the pension reform called by all the unions, 30% of the flights in Orly and 20% in Marseille, Toulouse and Lyon have been preventively suppressed.
✈️? On the ninth day of protests for the #reform pension, Parisians arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport, on the outskirts of the city, and blocked the entrance to Terminal 1.
Some travelers had to finish the tour on foot in order to catch their flights. pic.twitter.com/OD0xGSAixE
— Voice of America (@VozdeAmerica) March 23, 2023
No kerosene at airports?
The problems for air activity could go beyond the strike of air traffic controllers, because, as the Government itself recognized this Thursday, there are concern about the supply of kerosene from Paris airports.
In fact, the Ministry of Energy Transition has indicated that it has approved a decree to force some employees of the Gonfreville refinery of the TotalEnergies group to work in Normandy from which they are supplied, although for the moment it has not decided to notify them of this obligation.
The Ministry explained that “the Government follows the situation hour by hour” and that it will apply these obligations “when they cannot be avoided.”
In front of that Gonfreville refinery, a strike picket had been formed this morning trying to prevent these notifications from being formalized by preventing the change of shift.
canceled trains and junk
The strikes will also continue over the weekend in the railways and, although the state company SNCF has not yet given global figures for the trains that will not run, travelers are already receiving notifications in case of cancellations.
In the garbage collection, Strike calls in Paris and its metropolitan area have been extended for the time being until Monday, with several thousand tons of waste still piling up on the streets and incinerators shut down.
Article 49.3
The protests erupted after Macron decided to use the article 49.3 of the Constitution to avoid submitting the pension reform to a vote in the French National Assembly, after verifying that the government did not have a sufficient majority to carry out one of the star projects of the French president.
The justification for the reform given from the beginning by the Macron government is to guarantee the financial balance on the horizon of 2030, given the potential deficit in the coming years due to the aging of the population, which means a greater number of retirees and fewer contributors.
The Pension Orientation Council (COR, an official advisory body) calculates that now and until the horizon of 2027-2028, the deficit of this regime will be between 9,000 and 11,000 million euros per yeara figure that will increase to 16,000 by 2032. In relative terms, that will mean a hole of between five and eight tenths of gross domestic product (GDP).
To compensate for this deficit, the main measure consists of progressively delaying the minimum retirement age by two years until 2030, from the current 62 to 64.
