Category: France

  • RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s new President Moetai Brotherson is in Paris for wide-ranging talks with the French government and the organisers of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.

    His visit involves meetings with a range of ministers and officials to continue cooperation arrangements initiated by his predecessor.

    “I’m not here to come begging,” Brotherson said, adding that he wanted to ensure that France was helping to decrease dependence on French financial transfers by developing French Polynesia as a country with its own resources.

    He told the news site Outremers360 that he wants any process of self-determination to be arbitrated by the United Nations.

    Restating a timeframe of up to 15 years until a referendum on independence, Brotherson said that it was not utopian.

    “[French] Polynesia is as big as Europe, and in terms of population, it is [the size of] Montpellier”, he said, referring to the southern French city with its 300,000 inhabitants.

    He said time needed to be taken to prepare, and by seeking independence “we will be able to take decisions with full responsibility”.

    By contrast, he said the preceding pro-autonomy governments had the reflex to say that in the end, if they did not make the right decisions, they would turn to “mother” France.

    Support for seabed mining ban
    Brotherson met the State Secretary for the Sea Herve Berville who reconfirmed the French government’s support for a seabed mining ban.

    Berville also reconfirmed that such a ban would also apply to French Polynesian waters.

    Brotherson again expressed his unwavering support for next year’s Olympic surfing competition to be held in Tahiti.

    After flooding in the area last month, French Polynesian Sports Minister Nahema Temarii cast doubt on Tahiti being able to go ahead with the competition.

    However, the site manager of the Paris Olympics organising committee, as well as Brotherson, said the event would go ahead as planned.

    After becoming President last month, Brotherson will this week officially relinquish his seat in the French National Assembly, to which he was re-elected last year when his pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira for the first time won all three available Paris seats.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson's official visit
    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson’s official visit this week. Image: Polynésie 1ère screenshot APR


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s new President Moetai Brotherson is in Paris for wide-ranging talks with the French government and the organisers of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.

    His visit involves meetings with a range of ministers and officials to continue cooperation arrangements initiated by his predecessor.

    “I’m not here to come begging,” Brotherson said, adding that he wanted to ensure that France was helping to decrease dependence on French financial transfers by developing French Polynesia as a country with its own resources.

    He told the news site Outremers360 that he wants any process of self-determination to be arbitrated by the United Nations.

    Restating a timeframe of up to 15 years until a referendum on independence, Brotherson said that it was not utopian.

    “[French] Polynesia is as big as Europe, and in terms of population, it is [the size of] Montpellier”, he said, referring to the southern French city with its 300,000 inhabitants.

    He said time needed to be taken to prepare, and by seeking independence “we will be able to take decisions with full responsibility”.

    By contrast, he said the preceding pro-autonomy governments had the reflex to say that in the end, if they did not make the right decisions, they would turn to “mother” France.

    Support for seabed mining ban
    Brotherson met the State Secretary for the Sea Herve Berville who reconfirmed the French government’s support for a seabed mining ban.

    Berville also reconfirmed that such a ban would also apply to French Polynesian waters.

    Brotherson again expressed his unwavering support for next year’s Olympic surfing competition to be held in Tahiti.

    After flooding in the area last month, French Polynesian Sports Minister Nahema Temarii cast doubt on Tahiti being able to go ahead with the competition.

    However, the site manager of the Paris Olympics organising committee, as well as Brotherson, said the event would go ahead as planned.

    After becoming President last month, Brotherson will this week officially relinquish his seat in the French National Assembly, to which he was re-elected last year when his pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira for the first time won all three available Paris seats.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson's official visit
    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson’s official visit this week. Image: Polynésie 1ère screenshot APR


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • People have been out protesting once again in France over president Macron‘s pension reforms. This is despite him passing the changes into law in April. The demonstrations came as public support for Macron continued to look shaky.

    However, the bigger picture here is that French people are refusing to back down in the face of politicians’ nefarious actions.

    Macron: resistance against the pension plan

    As the Canary previously reported:

    Macron forced through reforms to France’s state pension system in April. Amongst other measures, he raised the pension age from 62 to 64.

    The government printed parts of the pensions overhaul, including the key increase in the retirement age, in France’s official journal on Sunday 4 June. This means they are now law. However, unions have led a revolt against the plans.

    The protests haven’t been without problems. The state has come down hard on some demonstrators. The Canary reported that, during May Day protests:

    Police fired gas at demonstrators in Toulouse in southern France, while four cars were set on fire in Lyon. In Nantes, police also fired tear gas, whilst protesters hurled projectiles. And in Marseille, protesters briefly occupied the luxury InterContinental, smashing flowerpots and damaging furniture.

    Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said police arrested 540 people across the country, including 305 in Paris.

    And, on Tuesday 6 June, people once again turned out to show their anger at Macron and his crony-capitalist reforms.

    Yet more protests in France

    Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on the 14th day of demonstrations against the president’s law changes since January. Macron signed the legislation into law in April, raising the pension age to 64 from 62 after the government used a controversial-but-legal mechanism to avoid a vote in parliament on the bill.

    The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) Union has been central to the fight back against Macron. Its head, Sophie Binet, said of the protests:

    It’s going to be another big day in the history of the trade union movement… After six months the unions are still united and the level of anger, frustration and motivation is high.

    I hear people say sometimes that everything is over, but it’s not true.

    Clearly, countless people feel the same. On 6 June, people came out for around 250 demos across France. The CGT took direct action in some places, cutting power supplies to companies:

    People also targeted the headquarters for France’s 2024 Olympic Games hosting:

    Marches took place in cities, such as Toulouse:

    In Nantes, cops again fired tear gas at the public:

    AFP reported the state had put 11,000 cops on duty for the day. In contrast to March and April, when rubbish piled up in the streets of Paris and most long-distance trains were cancelled, there was only limited disruption to transport and public services. For example, around a third of flights were cancelled at Paris Orly airport.

    Will anything stop Macron?

    Meanwhile, Macron’s arrogant refusal to back down had been hitting him in the polls. However, his personal ratings are also moving higher again, having plunged to near-record depths in March and April.

    After two months of falls, a poll on 2 June showed that 29% of people had confidence in his ability to manage the country, up four points. However, around two thirds of people (64%) expressed no confidence in him. This underlines the deep animosity felt by many voters towards the former investment banker.

    It remains to be seen whether anything can reverse Macron’s deplorable law changes now. There is a motion by an opposition party in France’s parliament to try and undo the law. However, it is unlikely this will work. So, it is likely people will continue to protest.

    Ultimately, Macron probably doesn’t care – as this is his second and final term in office. The effect of this scandal on his party, though, likely to last.

    Featured image via France24 – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • New York, June 5, 2023—In response to a ruling by Hong Kong’s highest court on Monday to overturn the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling, also known as Bao Choy, on charges of giving false statements, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following the statement calling on authorities to end their targeting of independent journalism:

    “We welcome the Hong Kong court decision to quash the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling. It’s high time for the Hong Kong government to stop persecuting the media and drop all criminal cases against journalists for their work,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed in Hong Kong. No journalists should be criminally charged, let alone convicted, for their reporting.”

    Choy was convicted in April 2021 on two counts of giving false statements to obtain car ownership records on a public registry while researching a documentary for Hong Kong’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong about a mob attack on a group of protesters. The court fined her 6,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$765).

    In unanimously overturning her conviction on Monday, June 5, a panel of five judges at the Court of Final Appeal ruled that when Choy chose “other traffic and transport related matters” to search the public registry, that category should not exclude “bona fide journalism.

    Separately, on Sunday evening police detained Mak Yin-ting, a correspondent with French broadcaster Radio France Internationale and former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, while she reported on public attempts to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to the HKJA, a report by the journalist in RFI, and news reports. She was released after a few hours without charge.

    CPJ has documented the dramatic decline of press freedom in Hong Kong, once a beacon of free press in the region, since Beijing introduced a national security law on June 30, 2020, with journalists being arrested, jailed, and threatened.

    Among them include Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors of the now-shuttered news website Stand News, who are on trial for conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

    Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Awardee, is facing life imprisonment on national security charges in a trial that is due to start in September. Lai, a British citizen, is serving a sentence of five years and nine months on fraud charges. He has been behind bars since December 2020.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York, June 5, 2023—In response to a ruling by Hong Kong’s highest court on Monday to overturn the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling, also known as Bao Choy, on charges of giving false statements, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following the statement calling on authorities to end their targeting of independent journalism:

    “We welcome the Hong Kong court decision to quash the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling. It’s high time for the Hong Kong government to stop persecuting the media and drop all criminal cases against journalists for their work,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed in Hong Kong. No journalists should be criminally charged, let alone convicted, for their reporting.”

    Choy was convicted in April 2021 on two counts of giving false statements to obtain car ownership records on a public registry while researching a documentary for Hong Kong’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong about a mob attack on a group of protesters. The court fined her 6,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$765).

    In unanimously overturning her conviction on Monday, June 5, a panel of five judges at the Court of Final Appeal ruled that when Choy chose “other traffic and transport related matters” to search the public registry, that category should not exclude “bona fide journalism.

    Separately, on Sunday evening police detained Mak Yin-ting, a correspondent with French broadcaster Radio France Internationale and former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, while she reported on public attempts to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to the HKJA, a report by the journalist in RFI, and news reports. She was released after a few hours without charge.

    CPJ has documented the dramatic decline of press freedom in Hong Kong, once a beacon of free press in the region, since Beijing introduced a national security law on June 30, 2020, with journalists being arrested, jailed, and threatened.

    Among them include Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors of the now-shuttered news website Stand News, who are on trial for conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

    Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Awardee, is facing life imprisonment on national security charges in a trial that is due to start in September. Lai, a British citizen, is serving a sentence of five years and nine months on fraud charges. He has been behind bars since December 2020.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On 31 May a coalition of nonprofits, French cities, and the city of New York presented a demand at a Paris court against French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies. It asked that the Paris judicial court orders the company to suspend all new oil and gas projects worldwide – including liquified natural gas (LNG) ones.

    No new oil and gas

    14 French local authorities and five nonprofits originally initiated a case against TotalEnergies in January 2020.

    The case seeks to compel the fossil fuels company to comply with the Law on the Duty of Vigilance. This obligates companies to make plans with:

    reasonable vigilance measures to allow for risk identification and for the prevention of severe violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, serious bodily injury or environmental damage or health risks resulting directly or indirectly from the operations of the company and of the companies it controls…

    Specifically, the group is challenging the company’s failure to align its operations with the Paris Agreement. This requires international efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

    The claimants hope the case will follow in the footsteps of a Dutch court ruling against Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell. In 2021, a group of nonprofits successfully challenged Shell over its non-alignment with the Paris Agreement. As a result, the Dutch court ordered the company to accelerate its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Meanwhile, Oil Change International identified that TotalEnergies is planning to approve new projects. Its expansion plans between 2023 and 2025 would:

    lead to over 1,600 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon-dioxide (CO2) pollution over their lifetimes, if the projects’ oil and gas reserves are fully extracted and burned.

    Moreover, it stated that current 2030 emissions targets would fail to bring down emissions. Instead, it projected company emissions would stay flat between 2022 and 2030. It pointed out, though, that a fall in emissions is vitally needed to stay within the 1.5C limit.

    The latest demand, presented on 31 May, asked the judge to suspend all new oil and gas projects while the full case is reviewed. As it currently stands, the court does not expect to make a final decision on the case before 2024 or 2025. However, the judge is due to announce his decision on the suspension demands on 6 July.

    TotalEnergies doubling down on fossil fuel expansion

    While claimants sought the court order to suspend the company’s oil and gas expansion, TotalEnergies doubled-down on plans for another of its ‘carbon bomb’ projects. Carbon bombs are projects which create vast carbon dioxide emissions – over one billion tonnes – during their lifetime. The company appears, for example, to be taking steps to restart its controversial Mozambique LNG project.

    On May 23, Bloomberg reported that the fossil fuel major had agreed to set up a $200m fund for socio-economic development in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique. It stated that the announcement signalled:

    that the long-delayed development may soon get under way again.

    Bloomberg also detailed that investment in the LNG project is larger than Mozambique’s entire gross domestic product (GDP). It therefore argued that it would be:

    transformational for the country.

    However, the new fund would represent just 1% of the $20bn that financiers are investing in the gas project.

    A 2022 report by Friends of the Earth Europe and Justiça Ambiental argued that revenues from LNG projects in the region:

    will first and foremost benefit the foreign companies involved and in this process billions are lost for Mozambique through tax evasion structures set up by the companies, a weak fiscal context and low governmental capacity.

    An end to fossil fuels for frontline communities

    The Canary has also previously highlighted that TotalEnergies’ LNG project has had devastating impacts on the region’s communities. A publication by a coalition of environmental nonprofits laid out how the Mozambique LNG and two other foreign multinational LNG projects have harmed communities. The report suggested that the fossil fuel companies’ actions increased the risk of a violent insurgency that occurred in 2017:

    The arrival of rich international companies, hordes of foreign workers and military forces to guard the oil companies’ operations created the perfect breeding ground for an insurgency.

    Additionally, the report also estimated that if the gas reserves there are fully extracted and burned:

    they will generate more than 4.6 billion tons (gigatons) of CO2 – an amount 13 times as big as the annual greenhouse gas emissions of France.

    Projects like the Mozambique LNG clearly illustrate the need to bring TotalEnergies’ reckless plans for expansion to a halt.

    The Paris court could therefore deliver a momentous judgement in July. Elsewhere, however, the judicial and criminal justice system has shielded the company from public dissent.

    A “credible climate strategy”?

    As the Canary recently reported, both police and courts in Uganda have targeted human rights defenders (HRDs) fighting TotalEnergies’ East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). Moreover, authorities criminalised protesters through malicious use of the judicial system.

    TotalEnergies is co-developing the 1443km-long pipeline. It will transport oil and gas from Uganda to Tanzania for export

    The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) identified that TotalEnergies was one of the worst companies for attacks against HRDs in 2022. It recorded 14 attacks against defenders who had protested the EACOP project.

    Meanwhile, police have also violently repressed climate protesters in France. The Canary‘s Glen Black detailed how French police fired teargas at activists. Protesters blockaded the entrance to TotalEnergies’ annual general meeting (AGM) on 26 May. As Black explained:

    Opposition to EACOP is also one of the main drivers of the anti-TotalEnergies protest.

    Private finance campaigner at Friends of the Earth France, Lorette Philippot, attended the protest. She argued that:

    The only credible climate strategy for Total is the immediate end of all new fossil fuel projects. The climate bombs that Total is in the process of setting off in the four corners of the world must not see the light of day because each of them is pushing us towards a more unlivable world. This is the case of EACOP and Tilenga, but also of Mozambique LNG.

    If the judge rules in favour of the coalition, the demands of activists and communities on the frontlines of TotalEnergies’ projects could finally become a reality.

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    Feature image via France 24/Youtube screenshot

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • By Walter Zweifel, RNZ Pacific reporter

    New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front)  says the advice of the International Court of Justice is being sought over the contested 2021 referendum on independence from France.

    The movement — represented by Roch Wamytan, who is President of New Caledonia’s Congress — told a UN Decolonisation Committee meeting in Bali, Indonesia, that it considered holding the vote violated the Kanaks’ right in their quest for self-determination.

    New Caledonia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986, and under the terms of the Noumea Accord three referendums on restoring New Caledonia’s full sovereignty were held between 2018 and 2021.

    The date for the last one was set by Paris but because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population, the pro-independence parties asked for the vote to be postponed.

    The French government refused to agree to the plea and as a consequence, the pro-independence parties boycotted the poll in protest.

    The FLNKS told the Bali meeting that the final referendum went ahead “under pressure from the French state with more than 2000 soldiers deployed and under a hateful and degrading campaign against the Kanaks”.

    A total of 57 percent of registered voters stayed away, almost halving the turnout over the preceding referendum in 2020.

    Among those who voted, more than 96 percent rejected independence, up from 56 percent the year before.

    In view of the low turnout, the FLNKS stated “it is inconceivable that one can consider that a minority determines the future of New Caledonia”.

    ‘Legal and binding’, says France
    However, the French government insists that the vote was legal and binding, being backed by a French court decision which last year threw out a complaint by the customary Kanak Senate, calling for the result to be annulled.

    The court found that neither constitutional provisions nor the organic law made the validity of the vote conditional on a minimum turnout.

    It added that the year-long mourning declared by the Kanak customary Senate in September 2021 was not such as to affect the sincerity of the vote.

    The court also noted that by the time of the referendum on December 12, more than 77 percent of the population was vaccinated.

    The anti-independence parties in New Caledonia also consider the referendum outcome as the legitimate outcome despite only a tiny minority of the indigenous Kanak population having voted.

    The FLNKS has been pleading for international support to uphold the rights of the indigenous people and in its campaign to have the last referendum annulled.

    The Melanesian Spearhead Group said in 2021 that the referendum should not be recognised but the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum Mark Brown, of Cook Islands, did not back the move when asked about it this month, saying the Forum would not “intrude into the domestic matters of countries”.

    ‘French law has failed the Kanaks’
    The statement by the FLNKS to the Bali meeting said that “international bodies are our last resort to safeguard our rights as a colonised people”, adding that French domestic law has failed to give the Kanaks such protection.

    It pleaded for the UN Decolonisation Committee to support the FLNKS in its case at the International Court of Justice.

    The FLNKS said the ICJ was established with one of the principal purposes of the United Nations, which is to maintain, by peaceful means and in accordance with international law, peace and security.

    It also said he would like to get support for an official request so that the FLNKS can get observer status at the United Nations.

    A Kanak leader, Julien Boanemoi, told the gathering the decolonisation process in New Caledonia was at risk of “backtracking”, alleging that France was engaged in a modern version of colonisation.

    He said with the French proclamation of the “Indo-Pacific axis”, the Kanak people felt a repeat of the French behaviour of 1946 and 1963 when Paris withdrew the territory from the decolonisation list and stifled the pro-independence Caledonian Union.

    Boanemoi said with the lack of neutrality of the administering power France, he wanted to warn the Decolonisation Committee of “the risks of jeopardising stability and peace in New Caledonia”.

    Darmanin back in Noumea
    On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin is due in New Caledonia for talks on a new statute for the territory.

    Central to his talks with the FLNKS on Friday will be discussions about the roll used for provincial elections.

    Darmanin signalled in March that the restricted roll would be opened to more voters, which the FLNKS regards as unacceptable.

    Last month, the president of the Caledonian Union, which is the main party within the FLNKS, said there was a risk of there being no more provincial elections if the rolls changed.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In the summer of 2020, at the onset of a deadly pandemic, George Floyd’s murder propelled unprecedented numbers of people across the globe to take to the streets. From Australia to India, from Johannesburg to Saskatoon, demands reverberated to defund police and invest in safer communities. While people flooded the streets in anger and grief, these crowds also represented the success of decades of…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Rights groups including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch call proposals ‘a dangerous precedent’ in open letter

    France’s top constitutional court has sanctioned the controversial use of surveillance powered by artificial intelligence at next year’s Olympics in a blow to privacy campaigners.

    The French court’s decision came two months after the national assembly approved laws allowing for the experimental use of hi-tech surveillance in an attempt to head off any trouble at the Games next summer, when 600,000 people are expected to attend.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Protests noisily disrupted French president Emmanuel Macron during a state visit to the Netherlands on 11 April. Banner-waving demonstrators shouted “Where is French democracy?” as Macron gave a speech at the Hague in Amsterdam. These referred to the uprising in France over the government’s enforced pension reforms.

    The demonstrators stood in an upper tier of the theatre, shouting: “You have millions of protesters in the streets”. They also held up a banner that read “President of Violence and Hypocrisy”:

    After security guards removed them, Macron said people who try to undermine laws passed by elected governments “put democracy at risk”. He then cited the 2021 US Capitol riots and a 2023 attack on the Brazilian Congress, both of which were perpetrated by right-wing nationalists and white supremacists.

    The opposition didn’t end there, however. Protesters confronted Macron elsewhere on his visit, too:

    Opposition followed Macron into day two

    Macron’s Dutch visit continued on 12 April. He visited a sold-out exhibition of painter Johannes Vermeer’s works at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Then, he engaged in talks with the Netherlands’ prime minister Mark Rutte on a canal boat. He also viewed a science park and signed a “pact for innovation” focusing on cooperation in semiconductors, quantum physics, and energy.

    However, protesters were also present on Macron’s second day:

    The visit was also clouded by a row over controversial comments that Macron made about Taiwan, the US, and China. Macron said in an interview with media – including Politico and French business daily Les Echos – that Europe should not be “followers” of the US or China when it came to Taiwan. However, the Élysée Palace insisted that the president had never called for Europe to keep an “equidistance” from the US and China.

    French protests continue

    People throughout France are still striking and protesting following Macron’s forcing-through of the pension reform. Sky News reported on 11 April that people had blocked power stations across the country, leading to a loss of 8.2 gigawatts of France’s power supply. That is equivalent to 16% of the country’s total. Meanwhile, on 12 April, the city of Nantes faced blockades across its motorway system in an actions that French autonomous media platform Contre Attaque called “Operation Dead City”.

    Unions are planning for a twelfth day of national strikes on 13 April.

    Featured image via AFP/YouTube

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Glen Black

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Recent news reports have revealed that child labor is not just a historical relic in the United States—and some politicians want to undermine existing regulations, claiming that less oversight is good for business.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.



  • “The Party Is Ending for French Retirees.” That’s the headline the Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) went with just days before French President Emmanuel Macron invoked a special article of the constitution to bypass the National Assembly and enshrine an increase in the retirement age in national law. The Journal proclaimed:

    The golden age of French pensions is coming to an end, one way or another, in an extreme example of the demographic stress afflicting the retirement systems of advanced economies throughout the world.

    The possibility that this “golden age” could be extended is not even entertained. Due to previous “reforms” (CounterSpin, 9/17/10), the pension of the average French person is already facing cuts over the coming decades. So preserving the current level of benefits would require strengthening the system. For the Journal, this is out of the question. Stingier pensions, on the other hand, are portrayed as the inevitable result of “demographic stress,” not policy choices.

    The French people, by contrast, recognize that a less generous pension system is far from an inevitability. Protesters quickly took to the streets this January after the government unveiled plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64; one poll from that month found 80% of the country opposed to such a change. And as the government pushed the reform through in March, protests grew especially rowdy, with monuments of refuse lining the city’s streets and fires illuminating the Parisian landscape.

    But that’s just how the French are, you know? They’re a peculiar people, much different from us Americans.

    The French are built different


    As the New York Times’ Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen put it in a recent episode of the Daily (3/16/23), protesters have been “talking about how life begins when work ends, which is a deeply held French conviction, very different from the American view that life is enriched and enhanced by work.”

    Left unmentioned is the fact that, for decades, Americans have consistently opposed increases to the Social Security retirement age, usually by a large margin (CounterSpin, 10/26/18). Moreover, two-thirds of the American public support a four-day workweek, and half say Americans work too much. How French of them.

    US media (Extra!, 3–4/96) have taken to covering the uprising against pension “reform” in the same way the narrator of a nature documentary might describe the wilderness:

    Now, we come to a Frenchman in his natural habitat. His behavior may give the impression of idleness, but don’t let that fool you. If prodded enough with the prospect of labor, he will not hesitate before lighting the local pastry shop ablaze.

    The New York Times (2/24/23), for instance, ran an article in the midst of the protests headlined “The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most,” about a man who has “become a personal embodiment of France’s enduring passion for demonstration.” It followed that up with a piece (3/7/23) presenting French opposition to an increase in the retirement age as some exotic reflection of the French’s French-ness. A source attested to the country’s uniqueness: “In France, we believe that there is a time for work and then a time for personal development.”

    Meanwhile, while the Washington Post has mostly been content to outsource coverage of the protests to Associated Press wires, it did run a piece (3/15/23) by one of its own reporters titled: “City of … Garbage? Paris, Amid Strikes, Is Drowning in Trash.”

    The burden of old people

    This fairly unserious reporting on the protests contrasts sharply with the grave rhetoric deployed by the editorial boards of major newspapers in opposing the protesters’ demands. The Wall Street Journal (3/16/23), which has implored the French to face “the cold reality” of spending cuts, is not alone in its crusade against French workers. The boards of the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Financial Times have all run similarly dour editorials promoting pension reform over the past few months.

    Among these, only the Financial Times (3/19/23) opposed the French government’s remarkably anti-democratic decision to raise the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly, opining that Macron’s tactics have both “weakened” him and left “France with a democratic deficit.”

    The Washington Post (3/17/23), by contrast, suggested democratic means would have been preferable, but gave no indication of opposition to Macron’s move. (As FAIR has pointed out—3/9/23—the Post’s supposed concern for democracy doesn’t extend far beyond its slogan.) And the Wall Street Journal (3/16/23) actually saluted the move, remarking, “Give Mr. Macron credit for persistence—and political brass.”

    The editorial boards’ case for pension reform is based on a simple conviction—French pensions are unsustainable—for which there are three main pieces of evidence.

    First, the ratio of workers to retirees. The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) included a graphic projecting the worker-to-retiree ratio through 2070:

    As the graphic shows, this ratio has declined substantially since 2002, and is set to decline even more over the next several decades. This trend is referenced more or less directly in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), the Washington Post (3/17/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23).

    The declining worker-to-retiree ratio is meant to inspire fear, but in and of itself, it’s not necessarily a problem. After all, the increased costs associated with a rising number of retirees could very well be offset by other factors. It is therefore much more useful to look directly at how much of a nation’s wealth is used to support retirees.

    Which brings us to the second commonly cited piece of evidence: pensions as a percentage of GDP. This is mentioned in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), Post (3/17/23) and Bloomberg (1/16/23).

    As it turns out, there’s no problem to be found here. In its 2021 Aging Report, the European Commission estimates that, even without a rise in the minimum retirement age to 64, public pension spending in France would actually decline over the next several decades, dropping to 12.6% of GDP in 2070, down from 14.8% in 2019. Cost-saving factors, primarily the deterioration in benefit levels, would more than cancel out the increase in the number of retirees. In other words, there is no affordability crisis. It doesn’t exist.

    Which side are you on?

    The only actual evidence for the unsustainability of France’s pension system is the system’s deficit, which is projected to reach around €14 billion by 2030. This piece of evidence is cited in editorials by the Journal (1/31/23, 1/13/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23, 1/10/23).

    One solution to the deficit is raising the retirement age. Another is raising taxes. Oddly enough, the editorials cited above almost universally fail to mention the second option.

    The only editorial board to bring up the possibility of raising taxes is the Financial Times’ (1/10/23), which comments, “Macron has rightly ruled out raising taxes or rescinding tax breaks since France’s tax share of GDP is already 45%, the second-highest in the OECD after Denmark.”

    This statement says much more about the Times than it does about the reasonableness of raising taxes. Oxfam France (1/18/23) has estimated that a mere 2% tax on the wealth of French billionaires could eliminate the projected pension deficit. Rescinding three tax cuts that Macron’s government passed and that largely benefit the wealthy could free up €16 billion each year. That would plug the pension system’s projected deficit with money left over.

    Which option you pick—increasing taxes on the wealthy or raising the retirement age—depends entirely on who you want to bear the costs of shoring up the pension system. Do you want the wealthy to sacrifice a little? Or do you want to ratchet up the suffering of lower-income folks a bit? Are you on the side of the rich, or the poor and working class? The editorial boards of these major newspapers have made their allegiance clear.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • A historic social explosion is always a test for any left organisation, writes John Mullen, as he looks behind the latest wave of revolt in France, which is entering its 12th week.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.



  • As French workers intensify their fight against President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular plan to raise the nation’s retirement age from 62 to 64, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

    A poll released Wednesday shows that reactionary lawmaker Marine Le Pen—leader of the far-right National Rally party, the largest opposition force in Parliament—would beat Macron by a margin of 55% to 45% in a head-to-head rematch. The neoliberal incumbent defeated Le Pen in a runoff election last April, but the openly xenophobic and Islamophobic challenger has gained significant ground since their first matchup in 2017.

    The new survey was conducted after Macron advanced his planned retirement age hike through executive order on March 16. The president bypassed the National Assembly once it became clear that his legislative proposal did not have enough support to pass France’s lower house.

    “We’re in the middle of a social crisis, a democratic crisis.”

    Macron’s blatantly anti-democratic move provoked an uproar. The labor movement had already been staging weekly nationwide strikes and peaceful marches since mid-January. But the president’s decision to circumvent a vote last month has brought more people to the streets, with heightened participation from high school and university students, some of whom have set up barricades on campus.

    Progressive lawmakers and union leaders have urged the working class to keep up the pressure, portraying the left’s struggle against Macron’s pension attack as a struggle for democracy in France.

    “Either trade unions win this, or it will be the far right,” Fabien Villedieu, a representative of a railway trade union, told France Info radio on Thursday. “If you sicken people—and that is what’s happening—the danger is the arrival of the far right.”

    Laurent Berger, head of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, told RTL radio that “we’re still asking for the reform to be revoked.”

    “We’re in the middle of a social crisis, a democratic crisis,” he added.

    Macron has so far refused to withdraw his proposed pension overhaul, which includes raising the minimum eligible retirement age and increasing the number of years one must work to qualify for full benefits. France’s constitutional council is evaluating the legality of the government’s plans and is set to issue a decision next Friday.

    According to The Guardian:

    The constitutional council, which has the power to strike out some or even all of the legislation, will assess the pension changes based on a strict interpretation of the law. Constitutional experts say the council is unlikely to strike the legislation down fully.

    The government is playing for time, hoping protests and strikes will fizzle out. Unions want to show that the protest movement still has momentum, whatever the council’s decision.

    Hundreds of thousands of people have continued to rally across France in recent weeks. The government has responded with an increasingly repressive crackdown.

    An 11th round of strikes on Thursday caused further disruption to schools, public transit, and energy production. In addition, clashes broke out “between demonstrators and police on the edges of protests in cities including Lyon, Nantes, and Paris,” The Guardian reported.

    Workers’ anger is palpable and mounting.

    “In the capital, protesters briefly set fire to the awning of the Left Bank brasserie La Rotonde, well known for hosting Macron’s controversial evening of celebrations when he led the first-round vote in the 2017 presidential election,” The Guardian noted.

    Meanwhile, rat catchers threw dead vermin at city hall.

    Also on Thursday, striking workers “forced their way into the building that houses BlackRock’s office in Paris Thursday, taking their protest against the government’s pension reforms to the world’s biggest money manager,” CNN reported. “About 100 people, including representatives of several labor unions, were on the ground floor of the building for about 10 minutes, chanting anti-reform slogans. BlackRock’s office is located on the third floor.”

    Jerome Schmitt, a spokesperson for the French labor confederation SUD, told reporters: “The meaning of this action is quite simple. We went to the headquarters of BlackRock to tell them: the money of workers, for our pensions, they are taking it.”

    BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with a nearly $9 trillion portfolio, has not been involved in Macron’s assault on France’s public pension system. But workers targeted the financial institution due to its role in overseeing the private pension funds that they may be forced to rely on.

    “The government wants to throw away pensions, it wants to force people to fund their own retirement with private pension funds,” one teacher told Reuters. “But what we know is that only the rich will be able to benefit from such a setup.”

    Le Pen, for her part, “has kept a low profile, hoping to increase her support among low-income workers, many of whom began their careers earlier and will be more greatly affected by the pension changes,” The Guardian reported.

    Earlier this week, left-wing luminaries alarmed by France’s escalating repression of pension defenders as well as environmentalists campaigning against water privatization signed a Progressive International petition.

    “We stand with the French people in the face of violent crackdowns on popular protest and the criminalization of dissent by Emmanuel Macron’s government,” it states. “The extreme violence of the police and the criminalization by the interior minister are clearly aimed at suppressing the movement against the pension cuts. This is an unacceptable attack on the democratic freedoms and human rights of French citizens.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  •  

    WSJ: The Party Is Ending for French Retirees

    The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) reports with evident alarm that “France has one of the lowest rates of retirees at risk of poverty in Europe.”

    “The Party Is Ending for French Retirees.” That’s the headline the Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) went with just days before French President Emmanuel Macron invoked a special article of the constitution to bypass the National Assembly and enshrine an increase in the retirement age in national law. The Journal proclaimed:

    The golden age of French pensions is coming to an end, one way or another, in an extreme example of the demographic stress afflicting the retirement systems of advanced economies throughout the world.

    The possibility that this “golden age” could be extended is not even entertained. Due to previous “reforms” (CounterSpin, 9/17/10), the pension of the average French person is already facing cuts over the coming decades. So preserving the current level of benefits would require strengthening the system. For the Journal, this is out of the question. Stingier pensions, on the other hand, are portrayed as the inevitable result of “demographic stress,” not policy choices.

    The French people, by contrast, recognize that a less generous pension system is far from an inevitability. Protesters quickly took to the streets this January after the government unveiled plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64; one poll from that month found 80% of the country opposed to such a change. And as the government pushed the reform through in March, protests grew especially rowdy, with monuments of refuse lining the city’s streets and fires illuminating the Parisian landscape.

    But that’s just how the French are, you know? They’re a peculiar people, much different from us Americans.

    The French are built different

    NYT: The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most

    A New York Times profile (2/24/23) depicted Jean-Baptiste Reddé as “a kind of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ who invariably appears alongside unionists blowing foghorns and battalions of armor-clad riot police.”

    As the New York Times’ Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen put it in a recent episode of the Daily (3/16/23), protesters have been “talking about how life begins when work ends, which is a deeply held French conviction, very different from the American view that life is enriched and enhanced by work.”

    Left unmentioned is the fact that, for decades, Americans have consistently opposed increases to the Social Security retirement age, usually by a large margin (CounterSpin, 10/26/18). Moreover, two-thirds of the American public support a four-day workweek, and half say Americans work too much. How French of them.

    US media (Extra!, 3–4/96) have taken to covering the uprising against pension “reform” in the same way the narrator of a nature documentary might describe the wilderness:

    Now, we come to a Frenchman in his natural habitat. His behavior may give the impression of idleness, but don’t let that fool you. If prodded enough with the prospect of labor, he will not hesitate before lighting the local pastry shop ablaze.

    The New York Times (2/24/23), for instance, ran an article in the midst of the protests headlined “The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most,” about a man who has “become a personal embodiment of France’s enduring passion for demonstration.” It followed that up with a piece (3/7/23) presenting French opposition to an increase in the retirement age as some exotic reflection of the French’s French-ness. A source attested to the country’s uniqueness: “In France, we believe that there is a time for work and then a time for personal development.”

    Meanwhile, while the Washington Post has mostly been content to outsource coverage of the protests to Associated Press wires, it did run a piece (3/15/23) by one of its own reporters titled: “City of … Garbage? Paris, Amid Strikes, Is Drowning in Trash.”

    The burden of old people

    WaPo: Despite protests, Macron-style reforms are needed — and not only in France

    The Washington Post (3/17/23) urged the United States to join France in “forcing needed reforms to old-age benefit programs.”

    This fairly unserious reporting on the protests contrasts sharply with the grave rhetoric deployed by the editorial boards of major newspapers in opposing the protesters’ demands. The Wall Street Journal (3/16/23), which has implored the French to face “the cold reality” of spending cuts, is not alone in its crusade against French workers. The boards of the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Financial Times have all run similarly dour editorials promoting pension reform over the past few months.

    Among these, only the Financial Times (3/19/23) opposed the French government’s remarkably anti-democratic decision to raise the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly, opining that Macron’s tactics have both “weakened” him and left “France with a democratic deficit.”

    The Washington Post (3/17/23), by contrast, suggested democratic means would have been preferable, but gave no indication of opposition to Macron’s move. (As FAIR has pointed out—3/9/23—the Post’s supposed concern for democracy doesn’t extend far beyond its slogan.) And the Wall Street Journal (3/16/23) actually saluted the move, remarking, “Give Mr. Macron credit for persistence—and political brass.”

    The editorial boards’ case for pension reform is based on a simple conviction—French pensions are unsustainable—for which there are three main pieces of evidence.

    First, the ratio of workers to retirees. The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) included a graphic projecting the worker-to-retiree ratio through 2070:

     

    Wall Street Journal: Ration of Workers to Retirees

    The Wall Street Journal graphic (3/14/23) does not note that over this same time period, from 2019 to 2070, the percentage of French GDP spent on pensions is projected to decline from 14.8% to 12.6%.

     

    As the graphic shows, this ratio has declined substantially since 2002, and is set to decline even more over the next several decades. This trend is referenced more or less directly in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), the Washington Post (3/17/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23).

    The declining worker-to-retiree ratio is meant to inspire fear, but in and of itself, it’s not necessarily a problem. After all, the increased costs associated with a rising number of retirees could very well be offset by other factors. It is therefore much more useful to look directly at how much of a nation’s wealth is used to support retirees.

    Which brings us to the second commonly cited piece of evidence: pensions as a percentage of GDP. This is mentioned in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), Post (3/17/23) and Bloomberg (1/16/23).

    As it turns out, there’s no problem to be found here. In its 2021 Aging Report, the European Commission estimates that, even without a rise in the minimum retirement age to 64, public pension spending in France would actually decline over the next several decades, dropping to 12.6% of GDP in 2070, down from 14.8% in 2019. Cost-saving factors, primarily the deterioration in benefit levels, would more than cancel out the increase in the number of retirees. In other words, there is no affordability crisis. It doesn’t exist.

    Which side are you on?

    FT: Emmanuel Macron’s indispensable pensions overhaul

    For the Financial Times (1/10/23), cutting pensions is “indispensable” because “plugging a hole in the pension system is a gauge of credibility for Brussels and for financial markets which are again penalizing ill-discipline.”

    The only actual evidence for the unsustainability of France’s pension system is the system’s deficit, which is projected to reach around €14 billion by 2030. This piece of evidence is cited in editorials by the Journal (1/31/23, 1/13/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23, 1/10/23).

    One solution to the deficit is raising the retirement age. Another is raising taxes. Oddly enough, the editorials cited above almost universally fail to mention the second option.

    The only editorial board to bring up the possibility of raising taxes is the Financial Times’ (1/10/23), which comments, “Macron has rightly ruled out raising taxes or rescinding tax breaks since France’s tax share of GDP is already 45%, the second-highest in the OECD after Denmark.”

    This statement says much more about the Times than it does about the reasonableness of raising taxes. Oxfam France (1/18/23) has estimated that a mere 2% tax on the wealth of French billionaires could eliminate the projected pension deficit. Rescinding three tax cuts that Macron’s government passed and that largely benefit the wealthy could free up €16 billion each year. That would plug the pension system’s projected deficit with money left over.

    Which option you pick—increasing taxes on the wealthy or raising the retirement age—depends entirely on who you want to bear the costs of shoring up the pension system. Do you want the wealthy to sacrifice a little? Or do you want to ratchet up the suffering of lower-income folks a bit? Are you on the side of the rich, or the poor and working class? The editorial boards of these major newspapers have made their allegiance clear.

    The post US Media Cheer as France Forces Old People to Work appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • French leader sees Beijing as possible ‘gamechanger’ and will also discuss European trade on three-day visit

    Emmanuel Macron has arrived in China for a three-day state visit during which he hopes to dissuade Xi Jinping from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while also developing European trade ties with Beijing.

    Shortly after arriving in the Chinese capital, Macron said he wanted to push back against the idea that there was an “inescapable spiral of mounting tensions” between China and the west.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • RNZ News

    Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been appointed as Special Envoy for the Christchurch Call.

    Ardern established the initiative to eliminate violent extremist content online in the wake of the March 15 mosque attacks.

    Her successor as Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, appointed Ardern to the newly created position.

    He had previously hinted she could continue her work on the initiative.

    Hipkins said Ardern would be New Zealand’s senior representative on Christchurch Call-related matters and would work closely with France.

    “This allows me to remain focused on the cyclone recovery and addressing the cost of living pressures affecting New Zealanders,” Hipkins said.

    Ardern will report directly to Hipkins and has declined to be paid for the job.

    “Jacinda Ardern’s commitment to stopping violent extremist content like we saw that day is key to why she should carry on this work,” Hipkins said.

    “Her relationships with leaders and technology companies and her drive for change will help increase the pace and ambition of the work we are doing through the Christchurch Call.”

    Ardern’s role will be reviewed at the end of the year.

    She is due to deliver her final speech at Parliament tomorrow and will formally leave politics next week.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

  • John Mullen looks behind the huge movement against Macron’s attack on pensions, which has brought millions onto the streets, and seen ongoing blockades and strikes.

  • France is in revolt. Ever since the 24 March decision by Macron to push through hated pension reforms without a vote, people have been shutting down city centres, and occupying schools, universities, and workplaces.

    Much of the news has focused on the movement in Paris. However, the rebellion isn’t only in the capital. It is happening in cities, towns and villages across the country.

    The Canary spoke to Ana, an organiser from Marseille, who has been involved in the protests and demonstrations in the city. She agreed to tell us a little about what’s been happening over the last week.

    ‘Manifestation sauvage’

    Ana said that people have taken to the streets of Marseille almost every evening since Macron bypassed parliament by invoking article 49-3 of the French constitution. These nighttime protests are known as ‘manifestation sauvage’ in French, or (roughly translated) wildcat demonstrations. The city’s anarchist movement organises them.

    Ana said that the police have responded to the wildcat demonstrations with tear gas and violence. For example, police mobilised with force against demonstrators on Tuesday 28 March. The cops arrested at least six people. The protests are repressed by the riot police, known as the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) and the Brigade Anti-Criminalité (BAC):

    The CRS and BAC also have a large visible presence in the side streets, at the large pre-arranged trade union mobilisations.

    On 30 March, Ana told us that a demonstration was held in Marseille, protesting against police violence. Barricades were set up on the streets.

    Stopping the train lines and motorways

    As in other cities in France, the rebels of Marseille have used the tactic of stopping the roads and trains in order to force Macron to back down.

    The most recent big strike day was on 28 March. Trade unions organised a massive demonstration, with at least 280,000 people in Marseille participating. Members of several unions blockaded the St Charles railway station for over an hour. Prior to the blockade, the station was still operating in spite of the strike. People stopped the trains by occupying the tracks.

    Ana told us that members of the Solidaries union blocked also the motorway on 28 March, and people blocked Marseille’s bus and tram depot at St Pierre too.

    On 29 March, members of the CGT union used cars and trucks to bring traffic to a standstill on the roads and in motorway tunnels around Marseille.

    Ana told the Canary that students have repeatedly taken action to block the entrances to their schools and universities. This happened at Lycée Saint-Charles recently, for example. She also said that students blocked the university campus at St Charles at least twice in March too. One blockade lasted 24 hours.

    On 21 March, strikers occupied the oil depot at Fos-Sur-Mer, building burning barricades.

    Finishing what the Gilet Jaunes started

    We asked Ana whether she has hope that the movement will succeed. She told us that people are becoming weary after months of intense struggle since the strikes began last year:

    Are we going to win? I am a bit lost.. Honestly, people are very tired and struggling because of money and the rise in living costs. The strikes started at the end of last year, even though it was only one or two days… People are feeling the effects of the strike especially those on precarious contracts. In my opinion Macron was strategic – when he choose to use 49-3 in mid-March – when he knew people would have started to feel the loss from the strikes. He refused to meet the unions time and time again.
    But she says that the ongoing spirit of resistance gives her hope:
    But I have some hope – whether it’s the students blocking their schools or the unionists blocking tunnels and motorways – I dream we can finish what the Gilet Jaunes started in 2019 against Macron.
    The French revolt against pension reforms should give us hope too. Lessons can be learned from the intensity of the demonstrations and disruptive actions across France. If our movements in the UK hope to challenge the state’s attacks on all of us, then we will need to work together to generate the level of solidarity and militancy we’ve seen across France in the past months.
    Featured image via screenshot/RMC

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • By Jan Kohout, RNZ Pacific journalist

    New Caledonia’s Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) say they will tell the French Prime Minister of the Kanak people’s “sense of humiliation” over the last independence referendum.

    The pro-independence alliance is set to talk to the French state from April 7-15.

    The secretary-general of the Caledonian Union, Pascal Sawa, told La Premiere television they need to discuss what happened in the referendum vote in 2021, which was boycotted by the indigenous Kanak people due to the effects of the covid-19 pandemic.

    “The first thing to discuss is the conflict in relation to December 12, 2021,” he said.

    “We cannot ignore what happened then. The state says there is a right for independence and that the accord is now past.

    “We don’t believe it has finished because we feel still feel a sense of humiliation.”

    In Paris, the alliance is set to meet French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne.

    In a statement, the FLNKS said they would discuss crucial topics such as the restricted electoral roll based on the Noumea Accord of 1998 which allows only people with 18 years presence in the territory to vote.

    “The FLNKS reaffirms that the electoral citizens body is irreversible from the Noumea Accord, and that its modification could break the social peace in the country.”

    They will also choose the next phase in order to progress the Noumea Accord, which in the eyes of the FLNKS remains unfinished.

    “The next phase is how we will come out constructively of the Noumea Accord to rebuild something that resembles us and that brings the people of New Caledonia together,” the statement said.

    The FLNKS statement affirms that all future discussions about the future of the country will be decided and acted in New Caledonia not France.

    ‘We will not reproduce the Accords’
    New Caledonia’s High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said that France would not reproduce the Noumea Accords.

    Seven months after taking his role in Noumea, the commissioner said he was optimistic about future trilateral discussions.

    He said it was a shame the last meeting did not involve the anti-independence side.

    “We are in a period, post-Noumea Accord, we will not reproduce the accords and we will hopefully find an intelligent solution for the sake of future generations.

    “The French Minister of the Interior and French Overseas Minister only have one voice, therefore the framework put down is very hard to be respected.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Group of Swiss women and French ex-mayor suing their governments in first such cases heard by rights court

    The governments of Switzerland and France have been accused of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not acting decisively enough on climate change, at a landmark legal hearing in Strasbourg.

    A panel of judges at the European court of human rights heard petitions from a group of Swiss women and a French former mayor seeking to bolster climate action in their countries. Although climate litigation has spread quickly around the world, these are the first such cases to be heard by the ECHR.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.



  • From France to Uruguay, not by chance, neoliberal governments have proposed a pension reform that adds years to the retirement age (two in France; up to five in Uruguay). The narrative that justifies raising the retirement age is twofold: (1) People live longer and, therefore, have to work more; (2) If these “necessary and painful reforms” are not carried out, the system will be defunded and the country will lose competitiveness in the world since other countries have applied these same measures, necessary for the financial class and painful for the productive classes. The same discourse, plus a third threat, has been repeated for decades in the United States: (3) Social Security (invented by “the communist president” Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression) is not sustainable, so we must raise the retirement age and, as far as possible, privatize it. It does not matter that it is and always has been self-sustaining. Social security is just that: insurance, not risky investments.

    Privatization was first put into practice in peripheral countries. The destruction of Salvador Allende’s socialist democracy 50 years ago and the imposition of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship had the declared intention of preserving the freedom of capital and using this country as a laboratory for the neoliberal theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The “Chilean Miracle” was noted for its social and economic crises, despite the tsunami of dollars from Washington and large corporations. The semi-private pension model was brought to Uruguay in 1996 and it only took 20 years for it to fail. The damn state should have come to the rescue of those harmed by investment geniuses.

    All this could be solved with a more direct democracy system, something that many of us have been writing about for decades, especially with the new digital tools.

    The difficulty that a single country, be it France or Uruguay, can resist this acceleration of the robbery of the working classes is due to the fact that these neoliberal policies have a global reach. Countries are held hostage by big capital that migrates from one country to another in a matter of hours, terrorizing populations with the threat of another economic crisis and forcing their rulers, democratic or not, to kneel before these feudal lords. On the other hand, the largest financial institutions in the world, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are allies of this mafia. The World Bank defines itself as a development bank, but its practice indicates the opposite: It is at the service of the benefits of capital, informing to the minute which countries are planning to vote on a law to protect their workers or to control banks with regulations. Thus, its partners and clients can protect their investments by transferring their millions from a sovereign country to a more friendly one, better placed in the ranking of “business freedom,” another of those old functional fictions.

    Since the 1980s, the productivity of workers in the United States and around the world has been steadily growing, while their wages have remained stagnant or have lost purchasing power. You don’t have to be a genius to understand where this difference between productivity and salary went. But they want more.

    Another tender explanation for legislating against the will of the people consists of the classic idea that it is not the unions that govern but the elected governments. But in France alone, 70% of the population is against the pension reform, and its “government elected by the people” refuses to listen. This deafness is classic and, in turn, is justified by another ideology: “The government must act responsibly, not demagoguery.” Again: responsibility before the capital of harassment; demagogy for exercising democracy, giving the people their right to decide.

    All this could be solved with a more direct democracy system, something that many of us have been writing about for decades, especially with the new digital tools. If the French could decide in regular referendums, the massive demonstrations and urban destruction that have been going on for weeks would not have occurred in France. But common citizens have no other effective tool than rebellion, in violent cases. Obviously, this idea of direct democracy is dangerous because it is an idea in favor of a real democracy.

    As history shows, capitalism is by nature undemocratic. It has developed from the brutality and carnage in its colonies; it has been strengthened by slavery; it has been consolidated with the multiple military dictatorships in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even lately, he has been more than comfortable with Chinese communism. When capitalism coexisted with liberal democracies, it was not because it was a democratic system but because it is a great manipulator, to the point of convincing half the world that democracy and capitalism are the same thing, since both are based on freedom. What he forgets to clarify is that democracy refers to the freedom of the people and capitalism understands it as the freedom of capital, that is, of the dictatorial elite that today not only owns most of the world’s wealth but the control of the global financial system and the near monopoly of the dominant media.

    The French have a long tradition of social protest, but they can also afford to riot in the streets since few will accuse them of being underdeveloped. Uruguayans, despite their long tradition of democratic institutions such as education, health, and individual rights, are much timider in their claims. Its oligarchy, like all of them, also has a long tradition of stigmatizing the advances of real democracy, accusing any popular demand of being communist (a recipe inoculated by the CIA in the 1950s and which survives 30 years after the Cold War) at the same time. They do it in the name of democracy and freedom.

    The (re)solution for France is not easy in an international context kidnapped by the masters of capital who demand and even convince their slaves to work more years for the same ration and, moreover, to do so of their own free will. For Uruguay, due to its context and its size, it is more than difficult. But in both cases, if resistance to economic dictate succeeds, they could set themselves up as dangerous examples.

    For these reasons, the only long-term solution is the union of a new current of Non-Aligned Countries or those associated by common interests (cultural and economic) such as Latin America, for example.

    But of course, we all know that the centennial solution of imperial capitalism has been the disunity, demobilization, and demoralization of the colonies and their own workers. So long as this ideological inoculation that today, in the former colonies, nationalist movements are on the rise. With one detail: they are not the anti-colonialist nationalism of the 1960s in Africa, for example, but a sepoy and parasitic reflection of imperial nationalism in their own colonies.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Human rights watchdog say people angry at Macron’s pension law had right to protest peacefully

    Europe’s leading human rights watchdog has accused the French police of using “excessive force” during protests against a fiercely contested pension law.

    Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said those wishing to gather peacefully had a right to be protected from “police brutality” and attacks by protesters against officers did not justify a heavy-handed response.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • John Mullen describes the escalating revolt against pensions attacks in France and argues for an indefinite strike to defeat Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron’s attack on workers.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • On Thursday 23 March, French unions staged a new day of disruption against president Macron’s pension reforms. Workers brought refineries to a standstill, along with mass transport cancellations.

    Interrupted supply from refineries has raised concern over fuel shortages for planes at Paris airports. This adds to a growing list of headaches in the crisis that include piles of rubbish in Paris.

    Macron, on 22 March, said he was prepared to accept unpopularity. He stated that raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 was “necessary” and “in the general interest of the country”.

    Protests were planned across the country on 23 March in the latest day of nationwide stoppages that began in mid-January against the pension changes.

    Some 12,000 police, including 5,000 in Paris, were to be deployed for Thursday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

    Plummeting approval

    Earlier in the day, protesters blocked road access to Terminal 1 at the capital’s Charles de Gaulle airport, French television footage showed. Half of all high-speed trains nationwide were cancelled, SNCF said, as a union source said one fourth of staff was striking. At least half the suburban trains into Paris were not running.

    Paris municipal garbage collectors have pledged to uphold a rolling strike until Monday, as thousands of tonnes of rubbish rot on the streets.

    Acting on Macron’s instructions, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne invoked an article in the constitution a week ago to adopt the reform without a parliamentary vote.

    The government on Monday narrowly survived a no-confidence motion, but the outrage has spawned the biggest domestic crisis of Macron’s second term.

    A survey on Sunday showed Macron’s personal approval rating at just 28 percent, its lowest level since the height of the anti-government “Yellow Vest” protest movement in 2018-2019.

    Airport fuel ‘under pressure’

    Around a fifth of schoolteachers did not turn up for work on Thursday, the education ministry said.

    Blockades at oil refineries will also continue. In particular, one TotalEnergies site in four is working in the country. The ministry of energy transition warned that the kerosene supply to the capital was becoming “critical”.

    The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has warned that its fuel stocks at the two main Paris airports are “under pressure”. It urged planes to fill up at foreign stopovers.

    Spontaneous protests have broken out on a daily basis in recent days. This has lead to hundreds of arrests and accusations of heavy-handed tactics by police.

    Amnesty International has expressed alarm:

    about the widespread use of excessive force and arbitrary arrests reported in several media outlets.

    On Wednesday evening, hundreds again took to the streets in Paris, Lyon, and Lille.

    ‘No legitimacy’

    France’s Constitutional Court still needs to give the final word on the reform. However, Macron told French TV channels that the changes needed to “come into force by the end of the year”. He also backtracked on earlier comments that the crowds demonstrating had “no legitimacy”. Instead, he said that organised protests were “legitimate”, but violence should be condemned and blockages should not impede normal activity.

    Undeterred, hundreds of protesters in Paris flooded onto train tracks on 23 March in the Gare de Lyon. They interrupted traffic and caused a delay of at least half an hour, according to national railway operator SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français). They chanted:

    And we will go on, we will go on, we will go on till revocation

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Global News

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

  • French president Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence motion on March 20 over his decree enforcing the attack on pensions, reports John Mullen. But the people’s revolt against it is escalating.

  • Protests in Paris and across France have ramped up since President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Thursday used a controversial constitutional measure to force through a pension reform plan without a National Assembly vote. Fears that the Senate-approved measure — which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 — did not have enough support to pass the lower house of Parliament led to a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.



  • Protests in Paris and across France have ramped up since President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Thursday used a controversial constitutional measure to force through a pension reform plan without a National Assembly vote.

    Fears that the Senate-approved measure—which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64—did not have enough support to pass the lower house of Parliament led to a Council of Ministers meeting, during which Macron reportedly said that “my political interest would have been to submit to a vote… But I consider that the financial, economic risks are too great at this stage.”

    “This reform is outrageous, punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs.”

    After the meeting, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced the decision to go with the “nuclear option,” invoking Article 49.3 of the French Constitution—a calculated risk considering the potential for a resulting motion of no-confidence.

    Members of Parliament opposed to the overhaul filed a pair of no-confidence motions on Friday, and votes are expected on Monday. Although unlikely, given the current makeup of the legislature, passing such a motion would not only reject the looming pension law but also oust Macron’s prime minister and Cabinet, and likely lead to early elections in France.

    As Deutsche Welle reported:

    “The vote on this motion will allow us to get out on top of a deep political crisis,” said the head of the so-called LIOT group Bertrand Pancher, whose motion was co-signed by members of the broad left-wing NUPES coalition.

    The far-right National Rally (RN) filed a second motion, but that was expected to get less backing. RN lawmaker Laure Lavalette however said her party would vote for “all” no-confidence motions filed. “What counts is scuppering this unfair reform bill,” she said.

    Leaders of the Les Republicains (LR) are not sponsoring any such motions. Reuters explained that individuals in the conservative party “have said they could break ranks, but the no-confidence bill would require all of the other opposition lawmakers and half of LR’s 61 lawmakers to go through, which is a tall order.”

    Still, Green MP Julien Bayou said, “it’s maybe the first time that a motion of no-confidence may overthrow the government.”

    Meanwhile, protests against the pension proposal—which have been happening throughout the year—continue in the streets, with some drawing comparisons to France’s “Yellow Vests” movement sparked by fuel prices and economic conditions in 2018.

    Not long after Borne’s Article 49.3 announcement on Thursday, “protesters began to converge on the sprawling Place de la Concorde in central Paris, a mere bridge away from the heavily guarded National Assembly,” according to France 24.

    As the news outlet detailed:

    There were the usual suspects, like leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, thundering against a reform he said had “no legitimacy—neither in Parliament, nor in the street.” Unionists were also out in strength, hailing a moral victory even as they denounced Macron‘s “violation of democracy.”

    Many more were ordinary protesters who had flocked to the Concorde after class or work. One brandished a giant fork made of cardboard as the crowd chanted “Macron démission” (Macron resign). Another spray-painted an ominous message on a metal barrier—”The shadow of the guillotine is nearing”—in the exact spot where Louis XVI was executed 230 years ago.

    Police used tear gas to disperse the Concorde crowd. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told RTL radio 310 people were arrested nationwide—258 of them in Paris. He said, “The opposition is legitimate, the protests are legitimate, but wreaking havoc is not.”

    Anna Neiva Cardante is a 23-year-old student whose parents, a bricklayer and a cleaner, “are among those who stand to lose most.”

    “A vote in the National Assembly was the government’s only chance of securing a measure of legitimacy for its reform,” Neiva Cardante told France 24 as police cleared the crowd Thursday. “Now it has a full-blown crisis on its hands.”

    “This reform is outrageous,” she added, “punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs.”

    Across the French capital early Friday, “traffic, garbage collection, and university campuses in the city were disrupted, as unions threatened open-ended strikes,” DW noted. “Elsewhere in the country, striking sanitation workers blocked a waste collection plant that is home to Europe’s largest incinerator to underline their determination.”

    “Article 49.3 constitutes a triple defeat for the executive: popular, political, and moral,” declared Laurent Escure, secretary general of the labor union UNSA. “It opens up a new stage for the protests.”

    The French newspaper Le Monde reported that “the leaders of France’s eight main labor unions called for ‘local union rallies’ on the weekend of March 18 and 19 and for a ‘new big day of strikes and demonstrations’ on Thursday, March 23.”

    Philippe Martinez of the CGT union asserted that “this forced passage with the use of Article 49.3 must be met with a response in line with this show of contempt toward the people.”

    Fellow CGT representative Régis Vieceli vowed that “we are not going to stop,” telling The Associated Press that flooding the streets and refusing to work is “the only way that we will get them to back down.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.



  • Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to overhaul the country’s pension system, his government on Thursday chose the “nuclear option,” opting to use a constitutional procedure to force through reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.

    While the proposal passed the Senate, the upper chamber of Parliament, 193-114 Thursday morning, “reports indicated that the ruling party, which lost its overall majority in elections last year, was a handful of votes short” in the National Assembly, which led to an emergency Council of Ministers meeting about triggering the Article 49.3, Le Monde explained.

    After announcing the government was invoking executive privilege, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “faced scenes of anger and unrest in the National Assembly,” reported Politico. “Far-left lawmakers belonging to the France Unbowed party booed and chanted the national hymn the Marseillaise as far-right National Rally MPs shouted ‘Resign! Resign!’”

    Using the controversial procedure to push through the plan is risky for Macron—founder of the Renaissance party—because it allows members of Parliament “to submit motions of no-confidence within 24 hours,” Politico added. “While the government has survived motions of no-confidence in recent months, the stakes are much higher this time around. If a majority of MPs vote in favor of a motion, Borne’s government would be forced to resign.”

    While multiple opposition groups in Parliament may respond with no-confidence motions, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has already pledged to do so.

    “It’s a total failure for the government,” Le Pen told reporters of the Article 49.3 decision, calling for Borne’s resignation. “From the beginning, the government fooled itself into thinking it had a majority.”

    Socialist Party chief Olivier Faure also criticized the approach, saying that “when a president has no majority in the country, no majority in the National Assembly, he must withdraw his bill.”

    Fabien Roussel, head of the French Communist Party, declared that “this government is not worthy of our Fifth Republic, of French democracy. Until the very end, Parliament has been ridiculed, humiliated.”

    MP Rachel Keke of the leftist party La France Insoumise stressed that “what the government is doing makes people sick of politics. It should improve people’s lives, not destroy them.”

    Former French presidential candidate and MP Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who launched La France Insoumise, tweeted: “It is a spectacular failure and a collapse of the presidential minority. United unions call for continued action. This is what we are going to focus on.”

    French trade unions have led national demonstrations and strikes against the overhaul since January. While protesters were oscillating “between rage and resignation” earlier this week, they filled the streets of Paris on Thursday, and “the leader of the CFDT labor union, Laurent Berger, announced there would be new protest dates,” according to Le Monde.

    The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) said in a statement that “this reform is unfair, unjustified, and unjustifiable, this is what millions of people have been asserting forcefully for weeks in the demonstrations, with the strike, and in all the initiatives. These massive mobilizations are supported by a very large majority of the population and almost all workers.”

    “The only response from the government and employers is repression: requisitions, police interventions on workplace occupations, arrests, intimidation, questioning of the right to strike,” the confederation added. “We won’t let it happen! What the CGT denounced as unfair yesterday is even more so today! This can only encourage us to step up mobilizations and strikes, the fight continues!”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • French unions have made an 11th-hour bid to stop the senate passing a deeply unpopular pensions reform. Despite two months of protests and strikes, a bill championed by president Emmanuel Macron is on the verge of passing. The legislation will raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, extend contributions for a full pension, and scrap some special privileges for public sector employees. Opinion polls show that around two-thirds of people in France are against it.

    The most visible impacts of the stand-off so far are the piles of rubbish on Paris’s streets. Municipal rubbish collectors and cleaners have stopped work since early last week. Around 7,000 tonnes of black bin bags and cardboard boxes have accumulated on pavements and outside restaurants in around half the city. Even in the other half of Paris, where private companies still whisk away refuse, collection has been complicated. Two key incinerators outside the capital are on strike.

    Street cleaners voted on 14 March to extend their walkout until 20 March. The result caused France’s interior minister Gerald Darmanin to demand the capital’s municipality order them back to work. However, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo retorted that she had “no power” and no intention of doing so.

    Strikes across Paris and France

    Several small demonstrations kicked off around France on Wednesday 15 March, including in the northern city of Calais. In a new day of strikes and protests, police said they expected between 650,000 and 850,000 demonstrators nationwide. This is fewer than the largest rallies last week. The walkouts also appeared more limited than in previous days of nationwide action. Nonetheless, some workers stood steadfast in rejecting the changes.

    As well as rubbish collectors and cleaners, CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union representative Eric Sellini said several refineries across France were not delivering fuel on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a public transport operator said services would be “very disrupted” between Paris and the suburbs, but only slightly affected inside the city limits. Additionally, just three out of five nationwide high-speed trains were running, national railway operator SNCF (société nationale des chemins de fer français) said. Furthermore, power supplier EDF said power stations around the country had reduced output on 14 March. This is because energy workers fear losing their special privileges to the pensions reform.

    Majority backing for pension reform in the senate

    A parliamentary committee started examining the retirement plan early on 15 March. This came ahead of a joint vote from the lower National Assembly and the Senate that could come as soon as 16 March. The biggest question over its passage is whether Macron’s minority government can muster the required number of votes in the assembly. Macron will need the support of the opposition Republicans party (LR) in order to pass the legislation.

    In a speech to lawmakers on 14 March, prime minister Elisabeth Borne insisted a majority exists in parliament for the changes. She appealed to LR lawmakers, who have long championed pension reform, by saying a vote in favour was “not support for the government”. Borne added:

    A majority exists that is not scared of reforms, even unpopular ones, when they are necessary

    If Borne fails to find a workable majority in the lower house, she could use a constitutional power contained in article 49.3 of the constitution. This would enable her to ram the legislation through without a vote. Analysts say this would deprive her and Macron of democratic legitimacy in the face of hostile public opinion, and would also expose the government to a confidence vote that it might lose.

    Political scientist Gilles Finchelstein, head of think tank Jean-Jaures Foundation, said using article 49.3 would be a “defeat for Borne, the government and the president”. However, he added that it’s “very unlikely” the government would trigger the article as it would have majority backing.

    Changing excuses

    The government initially claimed the changes were intended to make the system fairer. However, it is now emphasising they are about savings and avoiding deficits in coming decades. The proposal would bring France more into line with EU neighbours, most of which have pushed back the retirement age to 65 or higher.

    Featured image via Reuters/YouTube

    By Glen Black

    This post was originally published on Canary.