PARIS: French protesters launched a new push Tuesday to pressure President Emmanuel Macron into dropping a pension reform plan, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets and strikes disrupting transport and schools.

Union-led protesters came out for mass demonstrations for the second time in less than two weeks, challenging Macron’s plan to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64, a flagship reform of his second mandate. A police source said the authorities were bracing for up to 1.2 million people to take to the streets across the country.

If confirmed, the number would exceed the 1.1 million who came out on January 19 against the proposed shake-up — already the largest protests since the last major round of pension reform in 2010.

“We hope to be at least that many again,” the boss of the hard-left CGT union, Philippe Martinez, told media Tuesday, adding there would be 250 protest marches. Laurent Berger, head of the moderate CFDT union, said there were “already more people than last time”, even before the country’s biggest protest in Paris had kicked off.