Macron’s medicine for France

French president Emmanuel Macron gears up to take on the rail unions.

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The president has the people behind him
(Image credit: This content is subject to copyright.)

"Reform of the railways has constituted a third rail for French politicians," says The Sunday Times. So far, no president has managed to curb railway workers' exorbitant privileges. The unions "still glory in their defeat of Jacques Chirac in 1995". No wonder, then, that they have reacted furiously to President Emmanuel Macron's attempt to modernise the system, embarking on a series of strikes designed to paralyse the rail network for three months.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.