Against much criticism, France adopted the controversial pension law
French Senate
The French Senate adopted on Saturday, after ten days of conflictual debates, the contested pension reform, the flagship project of President Emmanuel Macron that generated strikes and demonstrations for weeks. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne did not hide her satisfaction after this first real legislative success at the beginning of a decisive week in which the government hopes to see this reform finally adopted after a chaotic parliamentary course. “An important step has been taken,” she immediately greeted in a statement for AFP, convinced that “there is a majority” in Parliament to adopt the reform. The flagship project of President Macron’s second term has not completed its legislative journey. A crucial vote probably awaits him on Thursday in the National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament. The Senate ended its race against the clock on Saturday evening, one day before the deadline, at midnight on Sunday, according to the article in the Constitution to which the government resorted to limit the time of legislative debates.
As the Senate wrapped up consideration of the reform, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets for a seventh day of action against the reform and the raising of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. The Ministry of the Interior counted 368,000 demonstrators in France, of which 48,000 were in Paris, less than on February 16, the day that mobilized the least since the beginning of the protest on January 19. The numbers are down significantly from Tuesday, when 1.28 million people took to the streets in France, according to the Interior Ministry. For its part, the CGT union estimated that more than a million people demonstrated on Saturday. It is the lowest figure presented by the central union since the beginning of the social movement, lower than the 1.3 million demonstrators on February 16. According to polls, the French are mostly hostile to this reform, considering it “unfair”, especially for women and employees with difficult jobs. In February, the avalanche of amendments submitted by the left-wing NUPES alliance prevented the Assembly from deciding on this reform, contested from all sides, without even being able to examine Article 7, which provides for the increase of the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. In the Senate, where the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI) has no elected members, the debates were more stormy than expected. In order to speed up the prolonged discussions, the Minister of Labor resorted to Article 44.3 of the Constitution, which allows a single vote on the entire text without submitting to the vote the amendments to which the government objects. Now it is the turn of the Joint Parity Commission (CMP) to contribute to a compromise on the measures that the Assembly and the Senate do not vote on in the same terms. The presidential camp and the right seem to have control of this commission. On Friday, President Macron said the pension reform must “finish” in Parliament, suggesting he was not ruling anything out, including recourse to Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows adoption without a vote. The opposition could resort to a no-confidence motion to cause the fall of the government. Only one motion was successful during the 5th Republic, on October 5, 1962, bringing down the government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou.
By Sara Colin
