FRENCH unions brought hundreds of thousands back onto the streets today as they tried to reboot the resistance to President Emmanuel Macron’s contentious law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.

President Macron approved the new law in April after the government sidestepped a vote in the National Assembly by using a controversial mechanism to force through the legislation.

But all the main union centres have continued to battle the changes and drew more than half a million protesters out onto the streets at around 250 sites across the country.

More than 100,000 marched through the streets of the French capital, Paris.

Some observers had predicted the turnout for the fourteenth day of national protests against the changes would be more muted.

But from the demonstration in Paris, the new secretary general of the left-wing union centre CGT Sophie Binet, said: “The mobilisation gives the lie to the predictions.”

Ahead of the march, Ms Binet said: “The president of the National Assembly has offered me a meeting on June 24. 

“This does not interest me at all because I want to meet her before June 8 to call on her to fulfil her role and allow parliamentarians to vote.”

The call was echoed by French Communist Party general secretary Fabien Roussel.

Mr Roussel said from a huge demonstration in Montpellier: “We want to exercise our right to vote in the National Assembly!”

Today’s protests brought power cuts to a large area of Issy-les-Moulineaux, just south of Paris and home to a number of media and IT companies.

The headquarters of the Paris Summer 2024 Olympics Committee, based in northern Paris, was also briefly occupied by protesters.

A third of flights were cancelled at Paris’s Orly airport and trains were severely disrupted by the strikes.