Emmanuel Macron will be forced to speak out on France’s ongoing pensions strike in his televised new year address on Tuesday as transport stoppages look likely to continue into a fifth week, causing major disruption over the holiday period and into January.

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The centrist French president, who made overhauling the country’s pensions system a key election pledge, has until now refrained from intervening personally, leaving his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, to deal with the day-to-day response to the crisis.

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But, as slogans among leftwing demonstrators at a street protest in Paris this weekend read: “Macron, your silence is killing us,” Elysée officials told French media that Macron’s televised speech on 31 December would aim to calm tensions. He is likely to express sympathy for the many people whose travel plans have been disrupted, acknowledge the constitutional right to strike and call for dialogue.

On a trip to West Africa before Christmas, he simply urged transport unions to call a truce over the festive season, which they ignored, leaving rail services severely disrupted.

Macron is unlikely, however, to enter into the complex technical details of the pension changes in his new year address, instead arguing that, after overhauling labour rules and the unemployment benefit system, changes to pensions are vital to his plans to deliver what he has called the biggest transformation of the French social model and welfare system since the second world war.

The government insists it will be fairer to create a single, universal points-based system for all – instead of dozens of different systems for workers in different sectors. It also says it will be able to balance the pension budget by incentivising workers to stay in the labour force until 64 in order to take home a full pension, instead of leaving at the official retirement age of 62. The unions, however, fear people will be made to work longer for lower pensions. Even moderate unions are angry at any effective change to the retirement age.

Read more @The Guardian