Tomorrow is not a good day to be sick in France. Almost all the country’s chemists’ shops will be on strike, reports The Independent.
Last week was not a good week to want to travel in France. Air France pilots were on strike, grounding almost half the national flag-carrier’s scheduled flights.
There have also been – or soon will be – street protests by notaries, court ushers, legal bailiffs, taxi drivers and driving instructors. None of these people is struggling to make a living. They are among the most privileged in France. They intend to remain that way.
The Socialist-led French government has announced plans to deregulate, or at least weaken, the entrenched positions of 37 professions or trades – from lawyers to locksmiths – who have traditionally been sheltered from the market economy.
For more than half a century, successive French governments have been urged to assault the barriers and high charges that such professions impose on French society.
Any attempt at change has been abandoned in the face of the kind of protest that the chemists will mount tomorrow. All but a handful of the country’s chemist’s shops will be closed.
The government has already hinted that it plans to abandon a controversial and overdue reform: the scrapping of the chemists’ lucrative monopoly on sale of simple medicines such as aspirin. No matter. The strike goes on.
Read more of this report from The Independent.