Sarkozy in pension showdown as nationwide street protests escalate

French students joined more than a million striking workers yesterday in the biggest protests so far against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to hike the retirement age to 62.

Some strikers decided to prolong their stoppages to try and make Mr Sarkozy give up the pension plans that are the cornerstone of the right-wing leader’s reform agenda and which he says are needed to slash France’s budget deficit.

Students and school pupils broadened the movement and their participation – along with the plans to make some strikes open-ended – was seen as an escalation of what has become the toughest battle in Mr Sarkozy’s presidency.

Yesterday’s nationwide streets protests were the biggest since the anti-reform battle began earlier this year, unions and police said, estimating the number of demonstrators at 3.5 million and 1.23 million respectively.

As a huge crowd of protesters snaked its way noisily though the streets of Paris near the national assembly, Prime Minister Francois Fillon defended the pension plans during a rowdy parliamentary session.

“We are determined to carry through this reform,” he said.

But opposition Socialist leader Martine Aubry accused him of overseeing a reform that “symbolises all the injustices and inequalities that characterise his policies and which the French find intolerable.”

Operations at 11 of France’s 12 mainland oil refineries were disrupted and 56 tankers were stuck waiting off the Mediterranean port of Marseille as petrol and dock workers held an open-ended strike.

Travellers faced major delays, with up to half the flights to and from Paris Orly airport and one in three at the capital’s Charles de Gaulle-Roissy and the smaller Paris Beauvais cancelled.

Budget airline Ryanair alone cancelled 250 flights to and from France and its boss Michael O’Leary said striking air traffic controllers were “the modern equivalent of highwaymen” who should be legally banned from striking.

Just one in three TGV high-speed trains was running, although Euro-star trains between Paris and London operated normally. Paris commuter and metro trains were also hit as transport workers walked off the job.

Train workers voted to renew their strike and the SNCF national rail company said services would likely be as badly disrupted today as yesterday.