‘Don’t Touch My Retirement!’ Wins the Day in France

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The thronging marches drawing more than a million protesters fizzled out more than two years ago. The black-clad youth stopped lighting piles of garbage on fire in “wild protests.” There have been some countrywide union strikes, but none have focused solely on the issue.

So it might have seemed that the fight in France over raising the retirement age slowly, to 64 from 62, was settled. But that was not the case.

Instead, it continued to fester and remained a seemingly quixotic rallying call for left-wing parties and the country’s labor unions, who faced the unbending resolve of President Emmanuel Macron of France.

Until this past week when, after prolonged political turbulence, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu stunned the country by offering to pause the change until after the next presidential election, in 2027.

The remarkable retreat was a major concession by Mr. Macron, known for his imperial top-down, all-controlling way of governing. And it threatened to roll back what many consider to be the only major accomplishment of his second term.

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Sebastien Lecornu stands in front of a microphone on a lectern. People sitting in rows of red chairs can be seen behind him.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu speaking this past week at the National Assembly in Paris.Credit...Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

But it allowed Mr. Lecornu’s government to gain enough support to skirt being toppled by lawmakers like two of its predecessors in the past year, at least for now.

That the prime minister was forced to unstitch the change was a measure of just how culturally attached France is to early retirement, considered a fundamental right by many. The thought of losing it has become a political lightning rod for the nation.

“What will remain of the track record of Emmanuel Macron?” asked Chloé Morin, a political analyst in Paris. “It is being unraveled.”

Ms. Morin and others concur that Mr. Macron had little choice.

The president was facing increasing pressure to call new legislative elections to resolve the impasse in the lower house of Parliament, which is deadlocked among three main blocs — left, center and right.

Even some of Mr. Macron’s traditional allies have begun to join the chorus of opposition voices calling for the president himself to step down.

“For him, conceding on the retirement reform was buying himself a little time to defuse the debate over his resignation,” Ms. Morin said. “It wasn’t even a choice. It was a fait accompli.”

While perhaps a political life raft, the concession also reflected the anger that has continued to simmer not only over change, but the way it was executed by the government.

The initial plans for the pension overhaul inspired huge demonstrations across the country for months. Seeing that the change would most likely not pass the lower house of Parliament, Mr. Macron’s government used a constitutional shoehorn, known as the 49.3 after the relevant constitutional article, to force it through.

Though legal, the use of the 49.3 — which effectively bypassed a full vote on the retirement bill in the lower house of Parliament — was widely seen as deeply undemocratic.

In his speech, Mr. Lecornu admitted that the retirement law has been stuck in the country’s craw for years now, provoking “tensions, anxieties, weariness, sometimes a feeling of injustice or incomprehension — whether legitimate or not — in terms of democracy.”

At the time, Mr. Macron explained the constitutional measure — just like the change — was unpopular, but necessary to ensure the country’s pension system’s long-term viability.

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A group of retirees in 2023 in France. Early retirement is considered a fundamental right by many in the country. The thought of losing it has become a political lightning rod.Credit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

The French enjoy one of the longest and most generous pension plans in the world. Even after the change, they retire earlier than average in Europe — where men retire at 65 and women at 64.5, according to the European Commission’s 2024 Aging Report.

But Mr. Macron said the French system, in which active workers pay the pensions of retirees, was quickly becoming unaffordable. Statistics show the number of retirees is increasing at a much greater rate than the number of workers, and those retirees are living much longer lives. Not changing the date of retirement, Mr. Macron explained repeatedly, would be tantamount to “making our children pay.”

Back then, the only mistake Mr. Macron would concede was “having failed to convince people.”

He tried to put the matter behind him, announcing a new pact with labor unions on working conditions, and setting out to visit villages across the country.

But the wound never healed, and the change was never fully accepted.

A poll in April 2025 — two years after the measure was pushed through — showed more than 60 percent of the country was in favor of repealing the law and returning to a retirement age of 62.

“While the political adage is that public opinion tends to forget and forgive, in this case, the issue became fixed,” said Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at Côte d’Azur University in Nice. It became a symbol of the government’s iron-fisted and “revolting” method of doing politics against them, he said.

“Once people feel you’re doing politics against them, especially in a country like France, which is very turbulent in terms of voicing its discontent, well, it’s very hard to go back to a peaceful situation,” said Mr. Martigny.

In France, a healthy pension is not seen only as an essential part of the country’s generous social security system, constructed after World War II to bind the fractured nation together, and fused with the country’s identity. To many, retirement is a just reward for the unpleasantness of both working and paying high taxes.

“It’s a very important element in the French psyche,” said Bruno Chrétien, the president of the Institute for Social Protection.

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President Emmanuel Macron on France on Friday at the Élysée Palace in Paris.Credit...Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Socialist Party, which like most left-wing parties in France as well as the labor unions, sees the welfare state as part of the party’s proud postwar legacy, and continued to fight Mr. Macron’s change to the retirement program long after it was passed into law.

Mr. Lecornu managed to survive this past week only with the Socialists’ support — and in return, they succeeded finally in wrenching the promised rollback of the law from the government.

But Pierre Jouvet, the party’s secretary general, and many other Socialists who backed the prime minister made clear that their continuing support was not to be taken for granted.

“The president is beginning to understand that he will be obliged, in order to complete his mandate, to yield concessions to the left and to the Socialists,” he said, “and that he can no longer govern the country alone without taking into account what the opposition is telling him.”

It is not clear a suspension of the pension overhaul will survive budget discussions. It will be opposed by conservative lawmakers and many of those belonging to Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition, who fume at the prospect of repealing a hard-won change.

Even so, many believe the government’s concession, which effectively kicks the issue before the next president, will spell the final demise of the law raising the retirement age.

“I don’t see any candidate campaigning on this issue” before the 2027 presidential election, Mr. Martigny said.

It would be hard for a candidate to say, “‘Let me warn you, if I’m elected, the first thing I’m going to do is put back the pension reform scheme on the table,’” he said, “because that would hinder anybody’s chance to be elected.”

Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.

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