French workers took to the streets today to challenge President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age, the centrepiece of his reform agenda as he prepares to seek re-election.
Unions called the showdown over Sarkozy's pensions bill, a reform which the right-wing president insists he will push through as an "absolute priority" and which was to be presented to parliament later in the day.
Sarkozy told lawmakers from his majority UMP party they must remain "firm" in their defence of raising the retirement age to 62, a party official said.
Strikers hope to match a similar protest on June 24, when between 800,000 and two million marched, and reports suggested they were on course to do so.
By the time the main march began in Paris, 450,000 people had already taken part in rallies around France, according to the interior ministry, around about the same total given by officials at the same point in June.
Under a banner marked with the French republican slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," a huge column of brightly dressed trade unionists and supporters filed out of the Place de la Republique in the east of the capital.
Estimates of strikers in the public sector showed higher numbers taking part with, for example, at least 28 percent of secondary school teachers off compared to 10 percent in June, according to government figures.
Schools, the national rail network, some public services and domestic air services were severely disrupted, and passengers complained of long delays on commuter train services and metros into Paris.
"We can see that employees are mobilised," Francois Chereque, leader of the CFDT union, told RTL radio, predicting that the turn-out would match or more likely exceed that of June. "It looks like a success."
Bernard Thibault, head of the larger CGT union, warned on Europe 1 radio: "If we don't get a hearing there will be further steps to this mobilisation, and nothing has been ruled out."
Ministers had done little to lower the temperature in the run-up to the day of action, insisting pension reform is necessary and there will be no retreat on raising the minimum retirement age to 62 by 2018.
The government argues this could save 70 billion euros (90 billion dollars) by 2030 at a time when France's public deficit -- at around eight percent of GDP -- is well above the eurozone target of three percent.
"If we don't do anything the deficit in the pension system will hit 20 billion euros in 2010, 45 in 2020 and probably 70 in 2030," Jean-Francois Cope, the leader of the UMP in the National Assembly, told Le Figaro.
"All the reports conclude we're heading to this dead end, and all the other European countries have faced up to this by raising legal retirement to 65 or even to 67 like in Germany, Scandinavia and Spain," he said.
At 62, the minimum retirement age would still be well under the average of around 64 in the OECD group of wealthy democracies, despite France having one of the world's longest life expectancies.
But French workers also pay high social charges on their salaries and on an hour-by-hour basis are among the world's most productive.
Retirement at 60 was seen as one of the left's emblematic victories in the first term of late Socialist president Francois Mitterrand, and its defence is seen as a bulwark against future liberal economic reform.
Meanwhile, Sarkozy has been weakened by a summer of scandal and his personal approval rating -- at around 34 percent according to several polls -- is at an all-time low, two years before the 2012 presidential election.
The bill will be presented to parliament by Labour Minister Eric Woerth, himself weakened by his implication in a series of financial scandals linked to France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.
With the president struggling to regain the initiative, the opposition accuses him of protecting his earlier tax cuts for the rich while making ordinary workers pay for the pensions shortfall.
Two out of five TGV high-speed trains were running, with a greatly reduced service on many other lines, state railway operator SNCF said. Eurostar trains between Paris and London and Brussels were expected to run normally.
Around a quarter of flights from Paris airports were cancelled or delayed.
An Obea/Infra Forces opinion poll on the eve of the action said 73 percent of French voters approve of the protest but also that 65 percent thought the government would not change course.