Emanuel Macron’s plan to reform (cut) pensions in France have proved spectacularly unpopular.

It’s so unpopular that even with overwhelming majority that he has in Parliament, its passage would push into municipal elections, so he has implemented his pension cuts through Presidential decree, because ……… well, you know:

The French government forced through its pension reforms by decree in a move designed to undercut opposition parties’ efforts to plague parliamentary debates with more than 40,000 amendments to the bill.

The pension overhaul, which aims to unify the country’s 42 different profession-specific retirement schemes, sparked the longest public transport strike in France’s history before making it to parliament. On Saturday evening, Edouard Philippe, prime minister, caught his parliamentary majority off guard by announcing he would trigger the 49.3 article in the constitution allowing the government to override parliament to adopt the legislation.

………

Philippe Martinez, head of the leftwing CGT trade union, told French news service AFP that the unions would take to the streets once again next week against the reforms. The leader of the far-left political party, La France Insoumise — France Unbowed — decried the “extraordinarily violent” methods of the government while Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, or National Gathering, said: “The French will not forgive this outrageous manoeuvre.”

I understand that politics ain’t beanbag, but this sort of sh%$ is why the right wing is on the rise in the EU.

The continual use anti-democratic tactics to strip protections from ordinary citizens while bailing out bankers and their ilk will make this worse, and not better.