80
French Courts Are Giving Protesters INSANE Sentences
(www.youtube.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
80 points (100.0% liked)
World News
21958 readers
74 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is fucked up! It is kind of scary how even here in Germany the news coverage is skewed in favour of Macron recently. Kind of framing it as a migrant revolt. You only hear about the riots in france but no background info about why it is happening and what measures are taken. At the same time you hear about France starting to spy on citizens smartphones and just ask yourself what the fuck is happening. Thanks for the translation!
The other thing that has become completely discarded in the narrative is the fact that this instability began with Macron's antidemocratic cram-through of laws dismantling France's social state.
His increase of the retirement age from 62 to 64, bringing it more in line with its EU neighbors (though still below all but two of them)? France's constitutional court had no problem with it. A bill to repeal the reform was proposed but failed to pass when a majority of representatives voted against it. This doesn't seem terribly anti-democratic to me.
Note also that this retirement age increase wasn't done for no reason. The pension system is suffering from more expenses and less revenue as the demographics of France tilt more toward the elderly. This was done to keep the pension system as a whole in the black.
In Spain the right wing is floating the idea of increasing retirement age from 67 to... 72 or 74.
Basically a "retire never" situation.
The democratic way would have been to submit the bill to increase the retirement age to vote. It wasn't voted. It was imposed.
The bill to repeal the reform wasn't passed not because representatives voted against it. That's not how it works. It didn't pass because it didn't gain enough votes. Because you would HAVE to vote AGAINST the assembly, which is not the same as voting against a law.
Then again, it wasn't done to keep the pension system as a whole. It was done to alleviate corporate social funding. The pension system wasn't lacking.
Sorry for the lack of sources, I'm on mobile. If you want them I can search for them.
As an example, in Germany, the age of retirement is now 67 (actually it's 65.7, but will be gradually increased until 2029 to reach 67. So, for anyone born after 1964, it is 67.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_in_Europe
A migrant revolt? Some of them might be, but a lot of them were at least 2nd generation.
This article from The Atlantic explains a lot https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/france-social-inequality-mass-protests-riots-intensity/674636/