Last Friday, the Paris transport system came to a standstill. Employees at RATP, the company that runs the metro and bus lines as well as suburban RER trains, launched the biggest French strike for more than a decade: between 60 and 98 per cent of the workforce took action, according to trade unions.

With ten metro lines completely closed and buses, trams and RER trains scarcely running, the strike wreaked havoc on Paris streets. People resorted to cars to move around the French capital, which in turn led to hundreds of kilometres of accumulated traffic on Paris’s M25, the périphérique. RATP workers were striking against Emmanuel Macron’s planned reform of the pensions system, which has proved as divisive as it is wide ranging.

The measure, one of the French president’s campaign pledges, will introduce a single “universal pension system” in place of the current 42 systems based on multiple professions. Workers’ pensions will be calculated according to the number of “points” accumulated through their career, instead of the current system, which is based on worked trimesters.

From 2025, a €10 contribution to the pensions system will be counted as one point, and once workers reach 62 years old, the number of points earned will be multiplied by €0.55 to calculate their annual pension. One euro paid under this new system, Macron has promised, will “give everyone the same rights” — but voters fear they will merely end up poorer than under the current system.

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