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PARIS — As confrontation mounted over a contentious plan to reform the retirement system, the French civil aviation authority said on Monday it was asking airlines to cut flights into French airports by up to 50 percent on Tuesday because of possible strikes by personnel.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency, meanwhile, said strikes at refineries and blockades at fuel depots had forced the authorities to begin drawing on France’s 30-day strategic fuel reserves.
The developments intensified a mood of gathering crisis with labor unions calling for national stoppages on Tuesday as the Senate prepares to finalize a package of reforms to the retirement system proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy and already approved by the lower National Assembly. The reforms, supposed to help wrest France from the economic doldrums gripping many parts of Europe, would increase the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62.
The civil aviation authority said France was asking airline operators to reduce flights into Orly airport outside Paris by 50 percent and by 30 percent at all other airports, raising the strong possibility that transport disruption on the rail network and highways will spread further to the skies.
A small number of flights scheduled to leave from Paris airports on Monday were also delayed or canceled after a surprise strike by aircraft refuelers.
A spokeswoman for Air France said at least two long-haul flights from Paris — to Seattle and Mumbai — had had been forced to take off with insufficient fuel, necessitating refueling stops en route. Airlines flying into French airports on Monday were being advised to carry sufficient fuel for their return journeys, according to Eurocontrol, the agency in Brussels charged with coordinating European air traffic management.
The announcement by the civil aviation authority came as high school students clashed with police and protesters blocked two main highways. The protests are seen as entering a critical phase with neither the government nor the labor unions prepared to back down and little sign of compromise.
On Monday, oil industry workers used blazing tires to prevent access to a refinery east of Paris, resisting management efforts to reopen it.
Motorists joined lines at service stations running low on fuel because of strikes by workers at France’s 12 refineries and blockades at some of the country’s 200 fuel depots. The government said only two percent of the country’s 13,200 service stations had actually run dry, but a spokeswoman for Exxon Mobil told Reuters: “The situation is critical.” Other estimates put the number of gas stations running out of some or all types of fuel at 10 to 15 percent.
Fearful that the pumps would run dry, many motorists scrambled to fill up while they could, contributing to the pressure on supplies particularly of the diesel fuel powering many French cars.
Add Van Bohemen, the head of emergency policy division at the International Energy Agency, said emergency supplies of fuel had been made available at depots because refineries were strike-bound. “The question is how to get it to the pumps,” he said in a telephone interview. “Some depots are blocked but there’s a lot of panic-buying going among the French people.”
With 98 days of oil stocks on hand, he said, “It’s a matter of logistics. It’s not really a matter of shortages.”
On highways near Lille in the north and Lyon in the south, truckers and protesters snarled traffic by what are called “snail” operations, slowing their vehicles to walking pace.
Christian Estrosi, the industry minister, said the authorities would take “the necessary measures” to secure access to fuel depots. “We respect the right to strike, not the right to put up blockades,” he said, according to Bloomberg News.
He also said France had stocks of refined products that would be adequate to guarantee supplies “for many more weeks,” Bloomberg said.
In the Paris suburb of Nanterre, riot police fired tear gas at some 300 high-school protesters who had set fire to a car, wrecked bus stops and hurled rocks, witnesses said. The authorities said disturbances had been reported Monday from 261 of the country’s 4,300 high schools — slightly less than in earlier unrest on Friday.
The French railway authority said only half of the country’s high-speed trains would run on Monday as the test of wills hardened. Labor unions called their first strike over the pensions issue on Sept. 7. Some commuter trains were harder hit, along with the Paris-Brussels high-speed, canceled because of a separate strike in Belgium. The Paris-London Eurostar was running normally.
Despite the disruption, a survey by a French newspaper, Le Parisien, on Monday showed public support for the strikes running at 52 percent, with an additional 19 percent of respondents expressing sympathy for the strikers.
Nicola Clark and Scott Sayare contributed reporting.
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