France will lurch from crisis to crisis until it confronts its retirement timebomb

Amid widespread protests, Muriel E Cockcroft has sympathy for French youth but fears how much steam will be let out at the next convulsion

I’m writing in response to your editorial (The Guardian view on France’s protests: a polarised country is in a perilous political moment, 19 October). While the focus is on Emmanuel Macron, let us not forget the hierarchical structure of French administration, from mayors to MPs to senators to prefects and heads of region. All are part of the government, but few stood up to bring leaky school roofs and missing teachers to national consciousness. I deplore the senseless destruction of shops and state buildings. But I also deplore the fact that students had to protest to be heard. In the many administrative tiers of this highly hierarchical country, no one acted and inertia prevailed.

Centrally, the government is financially challenged but refuses to acknowledge that having a huge deficit, an ageing population and a low retirement age are perhaps connected. Modest attempts to increase the retirement age also provoked violent protests. Financial tools for individual retirement remain complex and restricted. Thus, this sclerotic system presses on until the next crisis.

Neither side of the populist fringe offers a viable path forward. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise actively avoid confronting the retirement timebomb, preferring politically expedient promises over fiscal reality.

If a system treats retirement as a sacred cow even when the meaning of work is being redefined at lightning speed by AI, if it’s acceptable to have productivity grind to a halt in August because the wisdom of asking employees to all take four to five weeks off in the same month while we live in a 24/7 world is never questioned, and if that same system lets young people study by rote in leaky classrooms while offering its over-60s free social dinners, let us not be surprised if the pressure valve is showing signs of fatigue. My concern is how much steam will be let out at the next convulsion. Muriel E Cockcroft Duclair, Normandy, France