PARIS (MNI) – On the eve of a new wave of strikes to protest the
reform of the pension system, France’s Prime Minister Francois Fillon on
Sunday defended the reform bill and promised to counter unions’ efforts
to bring the economy to a standstill.

“I won’t let our country be hamstrung,” Fillon declared in a
prime-time television interview.

After a series of mass marches and strikes since early September, a
sixth day of protests is planned for Tuesday ahead of the Senate’s final
vote on the legislation, which would push back the retirement age by two
years. A number of railway unions have announced strikes beginning this
evening.

At the same time, truckers unions — new actors in the protest
movement — are planning to block the freeways, creating additional
problems for motorists in search of petrol stations with sufficient fuel
supplies. With most of country’s refineries shut down, the government
has mobilized the police to gain access to fuel depots and authorized
the opening of strategic reserves.

“There will be no shortage of fuel,” Fillon said, echoing the
assurances of other ministers who were on the airwaves throughout the
day to deny the risk of empty gas pumps and urge the French to allow the
government to carry on with the reform.

Labor Minister Eric Woerth, in charge of negotiating the reform
with unions and the parliament, repeated in a radio interview Sunday
that “the essential part of the text cannot be changed.”

The recent participation in the protests of rail workers, who are
not directly affected by reform, and students, who run the greatest risk
if the country’s pay-as-you-go pension system can no longer be financed
one day, has led some analysts to observe a transformation of the
movement into a form of social protest against the government itself and
a system perceived as profoundly unjust.

Fillon rejected that view, saying it was “exaggerated” and
repeating to union leaders that his “door is open.”

But the government will not back down from its plan to hike the
retirement age — “the key to financing tomorrow’s pensions,” Fillon
reiterated, arguing that the reform strategy was “very reasonable”
compared to measures being taken by other governments throughout Europe.

In response to demands by unions and the opposition Socialist Party
to suspend the reform and return to the negotiating table, Fillon asked
rhetorically, “Should we suspend the payment of pensions?”

Reminding that one out of every ten pensions today is being
financed by debt, the prime minister said the government’s reform plan
was “the most effective and rapid” solution to the problem posed by an
aging society.

In a provocative comment, Fillon asserted that a cabinet shuffle
was not an answer to the “social crisis.”

Since mid-summer, when President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in
advance that a new government would be formed after the pension reform
to manage the country’s affairs until the general elections in 2012,
there has been widespread speculation about whose heads, including the
prime minister’s, will roll.

Fillon said that this uncertainty has not prevented him from doing
his job. He also assured that the major fiscal reform announced for next
spring would not include a hike in the value-added tax.

–Paris newsroom +331 4271 5540; Email: stephen@marketnews.com

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