LOS ANGELES TIMES: Despite the uproar, France is not alone in considering such a step. Countries from Britain to Greece are also grappling with declining populations, ballooning government debt and longer life spans.
Reporting from Amiens, France
Didier Remy has spent his life so intent on retiring on his 55th birthday that he and his wife even planned their children accordingly, wanting them to be grown by the time he stopped working.
So pardon a little indignant hand-waving as he ponders the prospect of Nicolas Sarkozy fouling everything up. If the French president has his way, Remy will find it tough to retire with his full state pension in 2015, as he carefully plotted 20 years ago.
"My life was organized around the idea that I'm going to leave work at that age," said Remy, a lifelong employee of France's state-owned railway, whose benefits are the envy of other Frenchmen, never mind long-slogging Americans. "It's my goal. But it rests with the powers that be."
True to form in this protest-rife land, Sarkozy's announcement that he intends to raise the national retirement age sometime this summer sent thousands of demonstrators spilling into the streets last month in opposition. But this time the French are part of a larger tide of anger and anxiety surging across Europe.
With budget deficits ballooning across the continent, and a huge bailout of debt-ridden Greece on the verge of taking place, officials across Europe say they have no choice but to boost retirement ages if they are to tackle a monumental economic problem compounded by declining populations and longer life spans.
But few issues are as sensitive in a region where the right to retire at a decent age, and retire well, is considered almost an inalienable social right. For many here, it's one of the defining elements of their identity as Europeans, part of what they feel makes them different — more reasonable, more humane — from overworked, overstressed Americans. >>> Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times | Saturday, May 01, 2010
