The sounds of the bagpipes and hard rock music alternate as more and more foot troops and vehicles from the French trade unions gather around Paris' Place de la République on Thursday afternoon.

The grill stands are smoking, the representatives of the Force ouvrière are serving red farmer's sausage and pallets of 1664 canned beer.

Despite the cold and gray skies, there is a folk festival atmosphere.

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

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While food is still being eaten in neighboring bistros such as "Mon Coco", the leaders of the eight major trade unions are preparing to protest against the government's pension reform project.

A group photo on the Boulevard du Temple is intended to demonstrate unity.

"United against pension reform," reads the banner, behind which the scarlet flags of the second-largest, more radical union, the CGT, and the orange flags of the largest, more moderate, the CFDT, fly together.

The government must listen to what is happening in France, warns Philippe Martinez, longtime head of the CGT and probably the most well-known moustache-bearer in the republic.

Even before the demonstration in Paris starts, he is convinced that more than a million citizens will follow the union's call and take to the streets to take to the streets their opposition to the planned pension reform.

Strikes are going on across the country

CFDT boss Laurent Berger takes a similar view and calls on the government to withdraw the "brutal" plan.

Usually more compromise-oriented than the CGT, Berger has repeatedly confirmed his willingness to talk.

However, he defines the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 as a red line.

In its current form, pension reform is unacceptable because it is unfair and hurts the most vulnerable.

This strikes a chord with many French people, who, according to surveys, are largely opposed to the project.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators are therefore drawn to the Place de la République, where there is a dense crowd early Thursday afternoon.

But not only in Paris, but throughout the country there is a strike.

Trains and metros are cancelled, but also air traffic and many schools, authorities, refineries and nuclear power plants are on strike.

In Massy, ​​south of Paris, one of the power cuts threatened in advance by the CGT and denied by the CFDT also occurred.

While left-wing extremists from the so-called black bloc mingled with the demonstrators in Paris and threw stones at the police, President Emmanuel Macron defended his reform project from the Franco-Spanish summit in Barcelona on Thursday.

It was "fair", necessary to maintain the financial balance in the pay-as-you-go pension system and presented democratically.

Macron calls protesting peacefully against it “legitimate”, and he trusts the organizers of the demonstrations that there will be no major inconveniences and riots.

Same level as 1995

So far, the French government has not shown any concrete signs of meeting the demands of the unions.

Furthermore, the schedule is for the pension reform to be decided in the cabinet next Monday and then to be brought to parliament, where the conservative Republicans are not closing their eyes to talks.

But it is not unlikely that the unions will be able to mobilize masses in the coming weeks and thus repeatedly paralyze parts of public life.

Every second Frenchman sympathizes with the demonstrations, says the political scientist and director of the opinion research institute IFOP Jérôme Fourquet.

This is the same level as in the much-discussed year 1995, when France was blocked for weeks because of demonstrations against Jacques Chirac's pension reform.

"Social meteorology" is a difficult profession, said French employers' president Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux on Wednesday, with a view to the expected scope of the pension protests.

He recommended that his association employees work from home on Thursday.

But of course this is not possible in all companies.