“The will of the people who come to demonstrate is growing”, according to the CFE-CGC

“The will, the commitment, the enthusiasm of the people who come to demonstrate, not only is intact, but” that “rather grows as the protests develop. This must be taken into account”, underlined on Thursday April 6 on franceinfo François Hommeril, confederal president of the CFE-CGC, after the 11th day of demonstrations against the pension reform and while the unions have already made an appointment for a new mobilization on April 13. Nearly two million people demonstrated Thursday everywhere in France, according to the unions, 570,000 according to the Ministry of the Interior, a mobilization down from March 28.

>> Update on the processions of Thursday April 6 across France

There is “fairly little” resignation of the French, believes François Hommeril. “If we compare, we are on figures a little below, but on the sequence of eleven events, we are on average.” He recalls that on March 7 and March 23, “there were many more people”it was “just after an intervention by the Head of State”. He wonders about a “causal relationship”. “Perhaps, in order to be able to verify this point, we should ask Emmanuel Macron to intervene on April 12. Perhaps, suddenly, on April 13, there will be 3 million people in the street”ironically François Hommeril.

“We have won the battle of opinion”

On the continuation of the movement and the future of the reform, the boss of the CFE-CGC ensures live “of hope”. “I had the hope until the last moment that the government would have the wisdom to withdraw its project, that the President of the Republic, all of a sudden, would be of the grandeur of a statesman and that ‘he would consider, as I think many others in his place would have done, that the best solution was to withdraw the project and start again on a good basis. This hope “was a bit disappointed”, recognizes the trade unionist. But he puts his “same hopes” in the “wisdom” of the Constitutional Council which must render its decision on the pension reform on April 14.

“I think the Constitutional Council will censor the law for a significant part. I even hope that it will do so on the whole, even if it is quite unlikely.”

François Hommeril, boss of the CFE-CGC

on franceinfo

“We won the battle of opinion, we won the battle of argument”adds François Hommeril. “If on the legal level the Constitutional Council followed us, we could consider that it is an additional victory. But we have not yet definitively won, because the law has not yet been withdrawn. What we wish. “