AMSTERDAM: Protes­ters disrupted a keynote speech by Emmanuel Ma­cron on Tuesday as his domestic troubles cast a shadow over the first state visit to the Netherlands by a French president in 23 years.

Demonstrators shouted “Where is French democracy?” and unfurled banners at the start of the address in The Hague by Macron, who has faced violent protests and strikes at home over pensions reforms.

The two-day visit got off to a stormy start for other reasons too, with Macron facing criticism over controversial remarks in which he said Europe must not be a “follower” of either the United States or Beijing over Taiwan.

The French president is confronting the biggest challenge of his second term over his flagship pension overhaul, which includes raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 and demanding people work longer for a full pay-out.

In The Hague, the demonstrators had stood up in an upper tier of the theatre and shouted “you have millions of protesters in the streets” and held up a banner saying “President of Violence and Hypocrisy”.

Macron tried to answer as they heckled, and then after security guards had removed them he hit back by saying that people who do “whatever (they) want” against laws they disagree with “put democracy at risk”. He added that he was “not sure that the tax payer in the Netherlands will accept that we will finance a long social model in France... so I have to do the job back home.”

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2023