Popular anger over pensions France threatens to disrupt his visit next week British monarch Charles IIIwhom the unions say they have “targeted”.

“We will continue our mobilization (against the reform plan) and this visit will be in our sights,” Mathieu Aubry (General Confederation of Workers) and Yvan Faure of the Force Ouvriere trade union warned in an interview with the Sud-Ouest newspaper this week.

“It is almost certain that the king will not be able to take the tram” in Bordeaux as he planned, also predicted Pascal Mesguenot, the CFTC union representative at Transports Bordeaux Métropole (TBM).

However, as Interior Minister Geral Darmanin said today, France is ready to accept the British monarch, despite the protests.

“We are overloaded. We are ready to accept it on excellent terms,” ​​the minister told CNews TV channel.

“It won’t be a walk” for Macron and Charles

A Buckingham Palace source told BFMTV earlier this week that the protests were likely to affect logistical issues during the royal visit, although Paris police chief Laurent Nine told BFMTV he was “very calm” ahead of the visit.

Charles makes his first official visit as king abroad from 26 to 29 March. In addition to dinner at the Palace of Versailles, he will visit the Arc de Triomphe in Paris before addressing the Senate, a first for a British monarch. According to the program of the visit, he will also go to Bordeaux, where he will travel by tram.

Emmanuel Macron is “certainly more comfortable with monarchs than with the elected representatives of the people, whom he denies the right to vote on the reform of his pension system,” said Jan Brossa, a spokesman for the French Communist Party, after referring to Article 49.3. Constitution, which allowed the adoption of a bill to increase the retirement age to 64 years.

Socialist Senator Remy Cardon, for his part, noted that “this will not be a walk” for Charles and the President of France.

Far-left New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) spokesman Olivier Besancon, referring to Charles, joked to franceinfo: “We will meet him with a powerful general strike!”

^{Source: APE-MEB}