Macron tries to escape French pension row with street song

Even a traditional sing-song with a group of young Parisians is fraught with risk for a president attempting to persuade France to accept an unpopular increase in the pension age.

Emmanuel Macron had given a TV address on Tuesday regretting "no consensus could be found" on the reform when he went for a walk with his wife Brigitte.

He joined some men singing a song he remembered from his grandmother.

But it was shared by a Facebook group reportedly set up by the far right.

The young singers were part of a Parisian choir singing traditional songs on a street in the sixth district in Paris,

One of them approached President Macron asking him to join in a rendition of an old song from the Pyrenees called "Le Refuge", which he sang on a trip to the French mountain range last year.

The men, who were part of the local Saint Longin choir, were apparently using a mobile phone app to read the words of the song created by the Canto project.

Last October, left-leaning newspaper Libération revealed that the project, set up to promote the memory of traditional songs, had been founded and run by far-right activists.

Songs included French classics and nursery rhymes, but also others with a more questionable past including songs linked to the Spanish fascist Falange of the 1930s and Nazi Germany.

President Macron and his team are keenly aware of how viral videos can distract from the business of the day, especially when it comes to pension reforms.

Reacting to the video on a trip to the eastern Alsace region, he told journalists that whatever he did would have been wrong.

"You're the president and you're in the street. There are 10 young people in the street who I don't know, singing a song I know... they say 'would you like to sing with us?'

"You tell them no, no etc... you [journalists] would have spent 48 hours saying 'he shows contempt, he's not a nice guy'. On the other hand you know the song so you stop and what do you get? 'He sang with these guys who are politicised.'"

Last month another viral video showed how his relatively expensive watch magically disappeared in the middle of a TV interview.

It was a non-story as there was no evidence to back up claims that he was embarrassed by its opulence. The more obvious explanation was that it was banging the table. No matter, it was the tale that counted.

The only link with the far right is that the founder of the Canto project app he was reading from was close to the National Rally opposition party.

But the app's aim is to encourage communal singing. It includes plenty of revolutionary songs dear to the far left on its site, like "Ah ça ira", which features the friendly line "Aristocrats to the gallows!".

The choir are evidently from the Catholic right, but one of the singers, Géraud, told public radio station France Inter that their only link to the Canto project was that it had a repertoire of music they were interested in.

The story has legs because of the video and because the president is not in good odour at the moment.

He has now signed into law deeply unpopular reforms that raise the pension age from 62 to 64 and given Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne the job of leading 100 days of action, with a roadmap of major projects "at the service of France".

His latest appearance in public has had a far more cacophonous response.

The aim of his visit to the eastern region of Alsace was to relaunch his second term in office.

On arrival in the town of Sélestat in Alsace, he was booed loudly by residents and protesters. He then spoke to workers at a timber factory only to find that the power had been cut by union members protesting against the pension reforms.

President Macron responded defiantly to the chorus of boos on the streets, insisting he expected nothing else. "Anger won't stop me continuing to move around," he said.