The unions maintain the challenge to the reform of Macron pending the opinion of the Constitutional

The French unions have shown this Thursday that they maintain the capacity to mobilize against the pension reform.

But the influx to the demonstrations, although very high, has dropped in the last two weeks.

And the monitoring of the strikes has been reduced.

The eleventh day of protests has served this Thursday for the Government and the unions to evaluate their forces before the next decisive appointment: on April 14, the Constitutional Council will announce its decision on the law that has put France on the brink of political and social crisis.

The CGT union estimated 400,000 attendees at the Paris demonstration;

the previous one was 450,000, according to the same calculation;

and 15 days ago, 800,000.

The Government trusts that, with time, the movement will end up exhausting itself.

According to this reading, the French, despite the fact that they are mostly against raising the retirement age to 64, would be willing to turn the page.

Demonstrators in the city of Rennes, this Thursday.

DAMIEN MEYER (AFP)

The unions, which have been staging strikes and mass demonstrations for nearly four months, want to stage a new show of force in the streets of France so that President Emmanuel Macron will withdraw the law or at least suspend it.

Speaking to EL PAÍS during the demonstration in Paris, the leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced that the mobilization will last "until [Macron] throws his reform in the trash."

“And before,” he added, “nothing.

Fight, fight, fight."

“Why are we going to stop [de demonstrating]?” the veteran anti-capitalist and Eurosceptic politician wondered.

“He stops?

No. So why are we going to stop?

Look, sir, it's not an ideological fight or just a political one.

They are stealing two years of people's lives!

And people don't want to.

Final point".

At the demonstration, which began at 2:00 p.m. in a festive atmosphere on the central Esplanade des Invalides, there was a large presence of students and trade unionists.

Mathieu, a student of English literature in Paris and passionate about seventeenth-century poetry and theater, explained that the protest goes beyond reform.

They target Macron and the system, the 20-year-old college student said he was dressed in a black sweatshirt and military-themed pants.

“Our goal is for Macron to leave,” he declared.

"If the president falls, the whole model will fall."

And if he doesn't give in with the pensions?

"He will have no choice but to do it."

A few meters away, Fabien Pernot, a 42-year-old trade unionist from the metallurgical sector, was dressed as the comic book character Asterix.

And he commented: “In the comic, Asterix and Obelix resist, whatever the cost, against the invader, who is Julius Caesar.

We are also against this reform and we want to oppose it until the end”.

"Sooner or later," he added, "Macron will be forced to back down."

Around 4:00 p.m., the first riots broke out when a group of violent men attacked the La Rotonde restaurant on Montparnasse boulevard, a place associated with Macronism, as it was there where he celebrated his first electoral victory in 2017, and he has continued to frequent it ever since.

Despite the strikes in sectors such as cleaning, energy or transport, at no time during these months has France been paralyzed: the economy has continued to function.

But the movement, to which students from institutes and universities have joined in recent weeks, has brought to the surface a social unrest that goes beyond pensions.

Riots sparked by small groups of protesters and accusations of police excesses have clouded the debate.

The Ministry of the Interior has deployed 11,000 police and gendarmes throughout the country.

Participants in the Nice demonstration, this Thursday.VALERY HACHE (AFP)

Everything is now subject to the double decision of the Constitutional Court.

The

, as the nine members of the court are known, will have to decide if the law complies with the Constitution.

They could censor it in its entirety, a possibility that few politicians or analysts believe.

Or amend some articles.

The

will decide, on the other hand, if they accept the opposition's request to organize a referendum that, after collecting almost five million signatures, sets the maximum retirement age at the current 62 years.

The process would take more than a year.

a bitter discussion

The new day of protests is marked by a bitter discussion, via statements in the press, between Macron and Laurent Berger, general secretary of the first union, the reformist CFDT.

On a trip to China, Macron wanted to respond to Berger, who believes that France is going through a "serious democratic crisis" after the reform was adopted through article 49.3 of the Constitution — a kind of decree that prevents voting in the Assembly National—and despite the opposition, according to polls, of 70% of French.

“That an elected president, with an elected [parliamentary] majority, even if it is relative, tries to carry out a project that has been defended democratically, this is not called a democratic crisis,” Macron said.

"If people wanted to retire at 60 years of age, it was not me who had to be elected as President of the Republic."

The president, with these words, was referring to the fact that in April 2022 he was re-elected after a campaign in which he prohibited raising the retirement age to 65 years.

In the first round, he was the candidate with the most votes, with 9.7 million votes, 27.8%.

In the second, he beat the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, with 18.8 million votes, 58.5%.

Detractors counter this argument by pointing out that, in the second round, many of the votes Macron received were not to raise the retirement age, but to stop Le Pen.

The macronistas reply that, in any case, the president was the one with the most votes in the first round, when it is assumed that voters tend to choose based on their preference.

They also allege that the adoption of the reform has been democratic: the failure of the motion of no confidence on March 20 against the Government, a motion of no confidence that had annulled the law, showed that there was no majority against it.

In China, Macron accused Berger of not having made alternative proposals this time.

On BFMTV, Berger replied to the head of state: “I call for calm.

I call not to lose your nerves”.

On Wednesday, the head of the CFDT and the other seven union leaders met Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne for the first time since January.

The unionists left the meeting before Borne's refusal to withdraw the reform.

In recent days, several polls have been published that, if presidential or legislative elections were to be held now, Le Pen and his party would benefit the most.

Mélenchon responded at the Paris demonstration: “Sir, why is Le Pen going up?

I'm going to explain it to you.

In one word.

The points that Mrs Le Pen gains are the points that Mr Macron loses.

What is happening in this country is that it is seen in many countries in Europe and maybe also in Spain: it is the extreme right-wing of the right.

The right is going ultra-right.”

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