The postponement of a state visit to France by King Charles III had become almost inevitable: The optics of President Emmanuel Macron dining with the British monarch at the Château de Versailles as Paris burned were not just bad, they would have looked like a brazen provocation to the blue-collar workers leading a wave of […]
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The state visit by King Charles III of Britain to France that was scheduled for next week has been postponed because of strikes and protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension overhaul, the French presidency announced on Friday. “This decision was taken by the French and British governments, after a telephone exchange between the President of […]
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FOS-SUR-MER, France — “This government just does not listen to us,” said Renald, a 50-year-old electrical mechanic at the Port of Marseille, as his co-workers assembled a barricade this week on the route leading to a fuel depot. “There’s a deep anger here.” That anger is unlikely to have been assuaged by President Emmanuel Macron’s […]
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Workers went on strike and demonstrators marched around France on Thursday for the first big day of protests since President Emmanuel Macron shoved an increase of the retirement age to 64 from 62 through Parliament without a full vote, a test of the unions’ ability to maintain their pressure and the president’s ability to weather […]
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During the French Revolution, the Place de la Concorde, the sprawling cobblestone square across the Seine from the National Assembly, was known as Revolutionary Square — the place where the newfound power of the street paraded on full display, in all its glory and horror. It was there that both King Louis XVI and Queen […]
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PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron, addressing the French people for the first time since the tumultuous passing of a law that raises the retirement age to 64 from 62, denounced violent protests and said he would not tolerate their threat to the republic. Speaking in a televised interview with two journalists, Mr. Macron said he […]
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PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election program last year was short on detail. His mind seemed elsewhere, chiefly on the war in Ukraine. But on one thing he was clear: He would raise the retirement age in France to 65 from 62. “You will have to work progressively more,” he said during a debate in […]
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A momentous Fed decision The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and three other lenders over the past 11 days has put the Fed in a difficult position as it prepares to deliver on Wednesday one of the most consequential decisions on interest rates of the Jay Powell era. The central bank chief was already under […]
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France was waiting for President Emmanuel Macron’s next steps on Tuesday after his government barely survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament, ensuring that his unpopular pension overhaul became law but doing little to quell the swirling political uncertainty about the future of his second term. Despite months of massive street protests and strikes, Mr. Macron […]
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PARIS — The French National Assembly rejected a no-confidence motion against the government of President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, ensuring that a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62 becomes the law of the land. The first of two motions received 278 votes, nine short of the 287 needed to pass. […]
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President Emmanuel Macron’s government was facing a crucial no-confidence vote in France’s lower house of Parliament on Monday after his government forced a pension overhaul through without a vote, incensing labor unions, sparking violent protests and setting off the most intense political turmoil of his second term. In choosing to bypass Parliament, Mr. Macron opened […]
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PARIS — “We have a president who makes use of a permanent coup d’état.” That was the verdict of Olivier Faure, the leader of the French Socialist Party, after President Emmanuel Macron rammed through a bill raising the retirement age in France to 64 from 62 without a full parliamentary vote this past week. In […]
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Protesters in France blocked roads on Friday and labor unions vowed more strikes after President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to push a widely unpopular pension bill through Parliament without a vote, sending opposition parties rushing to file no-confidence motions against his cabinet. Mr. Macron’s decision, announced by his prime minister on Thursday during a raucous session […]
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PARIS — Lawmakers filled the grand chamber of the National Assembly, climbing into the red felt seats that curl in a semicircle around a room that has been the crucible of democratic debate in France since the French Revolution. The tension was palpable. A bill that would extend the legal age of retirement to 64 […]
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President Emmanuel Macron, worried that France’s Parliament would not approve a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62, opted to ram the legislation through on Thursday without a full parliamentary vote, a decision certain to inflame an already tense confrontation over the measure. After three meetings on Thursday with Mr. Macron […]
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Angry protesters lit small fires and clashed with police clad in riot gear at the Place de la Concorde in central Paris on Thursday after President Emmanuel Macron pushed his pension reform bill through Parliament without a vote. Several thousand people had spontaneously gathered there earlier in the day, after the government’s decision was announced, […]
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Roger Cohen contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, […]
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After waves of protests and rolling strikes that disrupted public transportation and left garbage piling up, all eyes were on the French Parliament on Thursday as it prepared to vote on a measure to increase the retirement age by two years. President Emmanuel Macron’s widely unpopular plans to raise the retirement age reached a critical […]
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PARIS — Hundreds of thousands of French protesters on Wednesday swarmed cities across the country, and striking workers disrupted rail lines and closed schools to protest the government’s plan to raise the legal retirement age, in a final show of force before the contested bill comes to a vote on Thursday. The march — the […]
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Mounds of food waste piled in view of the Eiffel Tower. Small cobblestone streets lined with overflowing garbage bins. The bank of the Seine skirted by heaps of trash. For more than a week now, garbage workers in parts of Paris and other cities across France have been on strike, protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s plan […]
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A favorite phrase of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is that in life “you have to take your risks.” He did, and rose from nowhere to lead France at the age of 39. Now, six years later, he has decided to risk his political future on reshaping France at the very point where it is […]
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Rendering homage to Gisèle Halimi, a feminist lawyer instrumental in the legalization of abortion in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday that a bill would be prepared “in the coming months” to enshrine in the Constitution the freedom to choose a “voluntary termination of a pregnancy.” A national law made abortion legal in France […]
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Monday is line dancing; Tuesday scrapbooking with friends; Wednesday caring for her two grandchildren. Martine Mirville’s itinerary is an advertisement for retirement in France. After decades of working, much of it as a secretary, she packed up her desk for the last time, bought an apartment in this seaside town in Normandy where her daughter […]
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Labor unions in France are carrying out a series of nationwide marches and strikes against President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plans to raise the legal age of retirement to 64, from 62. On Tuesday, they vowed to bring France “to a standstill” with the sixth day in a string of protests over the past two months. […]
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PARIS — Idle trains, closed ports, empty schools, canceled flights, uncollected trash, shuttered refineries. That is what France was bracing for on Tuesday as labor unions vowed to bring the country “to a standstill” and send more than a million people into the streets to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the legal age […]
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President Emmanuel Macron of France has embarked on a quest to win favor across Africa on the basis of a policy of “profound humility,” chastened by a decade-long frustrated military intervention and a wave of anti-French sentiment in France’s former African colonies. In practice, as he outlined in a speech this week, this reset will […]
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HELSINKI — A year ago, the day Russia invaded Ukraine and set in motion a devastating European ground war, President Sauli Niinisto of Finland declared: “Now the masks are off. Only the cold face of war is visible.” The Finnish head of state, in office for more than a decade, had met with President Vladimir […]
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MUNICH — Nearly one year into the brutal and costly war in Ukraine, Western leaders pledged to remain steadfast in their support for Kyiv amid worries about whether their unity can survive what France’s president called “a prolonged conflict.” As dozens of leaders convened in Germany, Ukraine’s president opened the annual Munich Security Conference with […]
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MUNICH — President Emmanuel Macron of France called on Friday for an “intensification” of Western support for Ukraine, but, unlike other leaders addressing the Munich Security Conference, he also underscored that peace negotiations were the ultimate goal. Mr. Macron declared that the “neocolonialist and imperialist” aggression against Ukraine unleashed by President Vladimir V. Putin of […]
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LONDON — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine pleaded with Britain on Wednesday to supply his country with fighter jets, making his dramatic appeal during a surprise visit to London that began a two-day diplomatic blitz of Ukraine’s Western allies. Expressing thanks for Britain’s robust and early military support, Mr. Zelensky nevertheless warned that warplanes were […]
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France’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, sat on a recent, rainy evening in a dim room at a Red Cross shelter, listening to young women recount their personal stories of poverty, fractured homes and schooling struggles. She smiled reassuringly and asked piercing questions. But what she did not say was that she could relate. Ms. Borne’s […]
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