The French official leading a controversial pensions overhaul stepped down on Monday over a scandal involving undeclared payments, on the 12th day of a crippling transport strike against the proposal, imperilling the holiday plans of thousands.
Jean-Paul Delevoye became the target of unions’ ire after admitting over the weekend he had failed to disclose 13 private sector posts, both paid and unpaid, in a recent asset declaration.
One of his jobs, as president of the Parallaxe education thinktank, paid nearly €5,400 (£4,500) a month on top of his ministerial salary – money he should have forfeited under a 2013 political transparency law.
“Jean-Paul Delevoye made these omissions in good faith. He will now be able to explain himself,” an official in the French presidency said, adding that Emmanuel Macron would name a new commissioner “as soon as possible”.
Laurent Berger, the head of France’s largest union, the CFDT, called Delevoye’s omissions “shocking”, telling France Info radio that “they obviously damage his credibility”.
The unions are demanding that Macron drop his plan to forge a single pensions system out of the existing 42 schemes – arguing that millions of people would have to delay their retirement to get a full pension.
A day of road blockades by truckers demanding higher pay added to traffic jams on Monday as most metro lines in the capital were again closed or operating only a handful of trains. Across France, only one in three high-speed TGV trains and one in four regional trains were running.
Fresh demonstrations are planned for Tuesday, with several universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris, said they had cancelled or postponed year-end exams because students would not be able to show up.
The rail operator SNCF has already warned that unless the strike ends in a few days it will not have time to get services back to normal by Christmas.
Delevoye has said he will pay back the money, totalling more than €120,000 (£100,000) since September 2017.