Paris is drowning in stinking garbage, rats are running around the streets, Politico writes

According to Politico, Paris is going through difficult times today – garbage is lying around everywhere, even in the city center tourists hold their noses because it smells bad. According to the mayor's office, more than 5,000 tons of garbage have already accumulated in improvised landfills.

But Parisians are worried not so much about bags of waste as about rats, which are gradually conquering the city. For every person living in the French capital, there are from 1.5 to 1.75 rats, which makes Paris one of the most dangerous, in terms of infection, cities in the world.

Prefects of several Paris districts said that the strike threatens to turn into a serious threat to public health, and called on the mayor of Paris, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, to take urgent measures. But she does not think about how to restore order in the city – she supports protest actions.

Meanwhile, memes about Emmanuel Macron, who is sitting on a mountain of garbage, are diverging in social networks. In the pictures, he is smiling, because in fact he is sure that the law on pensions will be finally adopted this Thursday.

Despite the fact that opinion polls constantly show growing opposition to reform and a decline in his own popularity, the president continues to insist that he is fulfilling the key election promise he made when he came to power in 2017 and after his re-election in April 2022.

However, the problem is that the country's budget may simply burst. Not today, of course, but in the foreseeable future. In order to reduce spending against the backdrop of a weakening euro, the authorities intend to carry out a number of reforms. And the most acute of them is pension reform.

According to Macron, the French do not work much – only 35 hours a week. And they retire too early. The retirement age for both men and women begins on average at 62 years of age. The President intends to force them to work longer for at least two years, raising the age of retirement to 64 years.

The largest trade unions in France, which in recent months have periodically brought millions of potential pensioners to the streets of cities, threaten on Thursday to declare a nationwide "shutdown" to the government if parliament adopts pension reform.

A "shutdown", as it is commonly believed in the West, is a crisis situation when the government is forced to partially or completely suspend the activities of ministries and departments and send civil servants on unpaid leave.