Head of State Emmanuel Macron has not fulfilled France's rail workers. They did not take a strike break over the holidays, but brought train traffic in the country to a standstill. Only about a third of the TGV high-speed trains ran, as the state railway company SNCF announced.
Rail traffic to and from Germany was also severely affected. There was only one train out of usually ten on the way to south-west Germany on Wednesday. The major train stations in Paris remained completely closed on the 21st day of the strike. Almost nothing went on in public underground transport in the capital. Only the two automatically operated metro lines were still in operation.
The situation for customers will only gradually improve in the coming days. TGV express trains should start again no earlier than Wednesday afternoon, the transport company announced. The situation will relax at the weekend: "We expect that three out of five trains will be on the TGV," said a spokesman. This could be the best offer for passengers since the labor dispute began around three weeks ago.
Protest against new pension rules
Already on Christmas Eve tens of thousands of travelers who wanted to visit their families for Christmas were stranded in Paris. On the first Christmas day, many locals and tourists walked in the capital in sunny winter weather or tried to get a bus. Car rental providers and taxis were completely overwhelmed by the suddenly immense demand.
The strikes are directed against President Macron's central promise of reform, who wants to standardize the complicated pension system with 42 different regulations and reduce the billions deficit in the pension funds. The factual increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 in the future is particularly controversial. The government offered long transition periods, but that was not enough for the unions.
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets against pension plans. The strike is being carried out primarily by railway unions, but other sectors and institutions are also participating in the protests, including the Paris Opera.
In front of their main entrance, around 40 dancers performed ballet scenes from "Swan Lake" in front of passers-by on Tuesday in protest against the reform plans. For this purpose, the dancers held up banners with the words "Culture in danger".
"It starts to hurt financially"
Negotiations between unions and governments failed last week and are expected to continue on January 7th. The unions have announced that they will continue to strike until an agreement is reached.
The SNCF has to pay dearly for the failure. So far there has been a loss in sales of around 400 million euros, which is "a considerable amount," said SNCF boss Jean-Pierre Farandou of the French daily "Le Monde". On the pre-Christmas weekend, the train carried 800,000 passengers.
Tourism and retail also complained, particularly in the capital, that their businesses were suffering from the strikes. Industrial associations put their sales down at 30 to 60 percent compared to the previous year - and the strikers also suffer from a lack of money after three weeks of being out of action. "It is starting to hurt financially," said train driver Raffi Kaya on the sidelines of a Christmas dinner organized by the unions. "But we've come too far to stop now."
