FRANCE’S GOVERNMENT has moved to avert a run on the petrol pumps, insisting stocks will last despite the shutdown of refineries by the continuing strike against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pensions reform.
With some petrol stations reporting shortages due to panic buying and workers continuing to block major fuel depots, transport minister Dominique Bussereau said there was no prospect of the pumps running dry. Output has been reduced at all but one of France’s 12 refineries, while the biggest oil port at Fos-Lavera, near Marseille, has been shut for 18 days.
“There will be no shortage of petrol at the pumps,” Mr Bussereau said, although he declined to say whether the government was considering using its strategic oil reserves. “We have as much as we need for at least a month.” The chairman of the oil industry association, Jean-Louis Schilansky, said on Wednesday that France’s fuel depots had enough stocks but warned that “if the situation continues as it is now, we’ll have to take a serious look at the issue of strategic stocks”.
On the third day of rolling strikes, intercity and regional trains were again affected yesterday, although there were signs that the disruption was easing across the transport sector.
The SNCF state railway operator said only 20 per cent of its workers walked off the job yesterday – down from 25 per cent the day before and 40 per cent on Tuesday. Almost all international trains and roughly 50 per cent of domestic ones were running normally, as were the Paris metro and bus services in the capital.
Bucking the trend for lower participation yesterday, students blocked or disrupted 342 of the country’s secondary schools, according to the interior ministry. This was a significant rise on the 135 schools that were affected on Wednesday and followed a call from the socialist former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal for pupils to “descend on the street” over pension reform.
Mr Sarkozy has pledged not to back down over the reform, which would raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, and insists it is essential to efforts to rein in France’s public deficit.
Unions and the opposition Socialist Party object that the government is making workers pay an unfair share of the bill for the financial crisis and have made alternative proposals for funding the deficit. Without explicitly mentioning pensions during a speech in Bordeaux yesterday, Mr Sarkozy said he was committed to his reform agenda. “I’m not obsessed by reform, but I’m responsible for steering the world’s fifth economy in a world that is constantly moving,” he said. “Our country cannot remain immobile.”
Bernard Thibault, leader of the powerful CGT, said unions were hoping for a big turnout at a further round of protests on Saturday and that they were “looking for new ways to pressure the government”. The debate on the pensions Bill is taking place in the upper house, and the government hopes to see the law passed by the end of the month.