By Elizabeth Pineau
SELESTAT, France (Reuters) – Protesters greeted French President Emmanuel Macron with boos and calls for him to resign in his first public appearance since he signed into law an unpopular rise in the retirement age.
Outside a factory he was visiting in the eastern Alsace region, Macron was faced with hostile banners and banging on pots. Electrical power inside the factory was also cut briefly.
Then as he walked through the crowd in a nearby village, many shouted “Macron, resign!” and one man told him: “We don’t want this pension (reform), what don’t you get?”
Another man told him he was leading a corrupt government and added: “You’ll fall soon, just wait and see.”
There were also some cheers, one man told him to “hang in there,” a woman thanked him for his work and others asked for selfies.
But even in a region that is pro-Macron – it voted slightly more for him than the national average in the 2022 presidential election – the welcome was mostly hostile.
Macron signed into law at the weekend the rise in the retirement age which means citizens must work two years longer before receiving their state pension.
That was after three months of protests that gathered huge crowds and at times turned violent.
In the village of Selestat, Macron said he was fine with people expressing their discontent. “But the country must move forward,” he said.
Earlier at the factory visit, he had also shrugged off the display of discontent, saying: “Pans won’t help France move forward”.
He said it was not possible for a society to listen only to those who “make the most noise” as he sought to highlight positive aspects of France’s labour legalisation.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau in Selestat, and Tassilo Hummel and Ingrid Melander, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
