Watch: French rail workers hold strike day as pension dispute continues
IndependentNov 26, 2022
France: Hundreds Arrested, Police Officers Injured in May Day Protests
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Image copyright: Getty Images [via BBC News]
The Facts
France's interior minister Gérald Darmanin on Monday stated that at least 108 police officers have been wounded — 25 of them in Paris — and 291 people detained across the country since clashes broke out on the sidelines of the main union-led May Day protests against Pres. Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms.
This comes as demonstrators armed with Molotov cocktails and other explosives hit riot police — who responded with a water cannon and tear gas — during the largest International Workers' Day rallies seen in France for three decades.
The Spin
Right narrative
French citizens have to embrace the pension reforms. With ever increasing life expectancies and an aging population, the cost to the state's coffers has become unsustainable. France needs to consider its economic and social future, and raise the pension age like all other European countries have done.
Left narrative
Despite those that say the numbers are unsustainable, the deficit for future years is not as dramatic as Macron and his supporters make it out to be. There are other ways of raising the funds necessary outside of increasing the pension age, including by reversing the tax cuts for businesses that Macron's government has itself implemented.
