In more than 200 French cities, tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday against the reform of pension laws planned by the government of Emmanuel Macron. The demonstrations were mostly peaceful, with the exception of a few minor incidents in Paris, Nantes and Rennes. According to the police, the number of demonstrators did not exceed 960 thousand people, while according to the organizers their number exceeded 2.5 million people.

After a small concession from the government last week, deciding to allow retirement at 63 for those who started working at 20 or 21, Macron came up with a proposal to expand remote work, hoping to calm the mood. “We are listening to the citizens, the government has already made a lot of changes,” government spokesman Olivier Veran told France Inter. Beyond the retirement age debate, “there is the issue of quality of life in the workplace. It is fundamentally. Our reform is broader, and perhaps this was not understood,” he said.

By focusing on teleworking, many analysts say the Macron government may be seeking to shift the focus of the pension debate to a less divisive issue as the parliamentary process for controversial reform continues in the French National Assembly. “After the coronavirus pandemic, people want to work from home more than ever,” a government spokesman said. “This is great because as part of our climate change plan, we will eventually need ten million French people to work from home twice a week. And we’re not there yet. I’m talking about distance from the workplace, organizing work from home and reducing the work week, because in small cities people are further from the place of work, ”he said, also touching on the issue of limiting energy consumption. “What I learned from yesterday’s protesters, apart from the issue of retirement age, is the need to work differently and better,” he added.

As debate continues this week in the National Assembly, the country’s largest unions, united for the first time in more than a decade, have announced two new rounds of mobilization. The fifth round is already scheduled for Thursday and will be accompanied by strikes, while the sixth is scheduled for early March, with union representatives, mostly from left-wing unions, talking about ongoing general strikes.

Until then, consultations will continue at the parliamentary level. The government, which on its own cannot form the necessary majority, has enlisted — in part — the support of the centre-right Republican Party. Both the government and the opposition consider it possible to form a majority, the first for the reform, the second against the reform.