Nationwide strikes and protests continued in France for an eighth day against President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reform plans, Anadolu Agency reported.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the French people needed to work two years longer to get a full pension, drawing a hostile response from trade unions, which said they would step up strike action to force an about-turn.

Tensions have been escalating in France after a meeting on Monday between Jean-Paul Delevoye, the minister and high commissioner in charge of pension reform, and labour union leaders failed to break the impasse.

French unions called for people to take to the streets to continue mass demonstrations.

In Paris, protestors gathered at Nation Square, while in the city of Nantes, demonstrators rallied at a shopping mall.

On Dec 5, France saw one of the biggest strikes in its recent history, and strikers have continued to protest against Macron’s pension plans.

The Interior Ministry said 806,000 people took part in the protests, while labour unions put the number at nearly 1.5 million.

France currently has 42 different pension programmes for different sectors, but the government proposed to unify those systems into one pension scheme.

France’s current programme is based on the principle of solidarity between generations under which the working population finances the pensioners of that year.

But due to the ageing population, fewer people are paying into the current system.

To fix this, the government introduced a point-based system that would compensate the workers with pension points for every day they work or every euro they contribute.

The reform would lift the privileges granted to civil servants and gradually increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, a move expected to adversely affect many sectors. — Bernama