The morning after the sixth day of nationwide demonstrations against the government's pension reform plans, the French daily papers attempt to sort out what happened on Tuesday, and suggest what might happen next.
With at least 1.28 million demonstrators in cities and towns across France, Tuesday was the most significant show of popular force since 1995.
'Deliberate deafness'
Centrist daily Le Monde points out that the official participation in the sixth day of protest was marginally higher than the 1.27 million estimated by the police for the last national day of action against pension reform, on 31 January.
The trade union organisers of the demonstrations claim that 3.5 million people took part in Tuesday's protests.
Over the past three decades, Le Monde reminds us, very few political debates have brought more than one million people onto the streets.
Pension reform tops the list of contentious topics, with huge protests against earlier attempts to change the system in 1995, 2003 and 2010.
In each case, the government backed down.
Le Monde confirms that there has been no public reaction from President Macron or his Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to yesterday's turnout.
The French leader has no plans to make a statement in the near future, provoking allegations of "deliberate deafness" from the unions.
The centrist paper suggests that there could be worse to come.
Some transport unions and workers in the oil refineries have voted to continue the strike. The Senate debate on the contested reform collapsed in disorder on Tuesday night, before a vote could be taken on the key question of the official retirement age.
And the unions appear to have the upper hand for the moment.
Laurent Berger, head of the CFDT group, is quoted by Le Monde as saying "the government is counting on this protest movement running out of steam, sooner or later. But the anger the dispute is going to leave behind in the world of work will be enormous and profound".
Government death warrant
The editorial in right-wing daily Le Figaro laments the fact that we are treated to the same inglorious public spectacle every time a government attempts to impose pension reform.
Paralysis "has become a routine," says the writer, "in a country which refuses to face the future with its eyes open.
The right-wing paper accepts that the government will sign its death warrant if it gives in. Failure on this issue will reduce the Macron administration to a rubber stamp administration, good for day-to-day business but nothing else.
According to Le Figaro, the unions are no more comfortably placed in calling on members to "bring the French economy to its knees," while many of those members are struggling to make ends meet because of the ravages of inflation.
And the worst part, says Le Figaro, is that the country will lose, even if the government wins.
That's because this reform has been so watered down that it won't, finally, work efficiently. And so we'll have to go through the whole ghastly spectacle once again, somewhere down the line. Back to the future.
