French upper house clears pensions reform bill
PARIS — The French Senate on Saturday night adopted President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pensions reform plan in the wake of a seventh day of demonstrations that were not as large as authorities had expected.
One hundred and ninety-five members of the upper house of the French Parliament voted for the text, whose key measure is raising the retirement age by two years to 64, while 112 voted against it.
The protests, and rolling strikes that have affected refineries, public transport and garbage collections, aimed to pressure the government to withdraw the pensions plan, which it said is essential to ensure the pensions system does not run out of money.
“After hundreds of hours of discussions, the Senate adopted the pensions reform plan. It is a key step to making reform happen that will guarantee the future of our pensions system,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on Twitter.
She added she was “totally committed to ensuring the text will be definitively adopted in the coming days”.
Further review
Now that the Senate has adopted the bill, it will be reviewed by a joint committee of lower and upper house lawmakers, probably on Wednesday.
If the committee agrees on a text, a final vote in both chambers is likely to take place on Thursday, but the outcome of that still seems uncertain in the lower chamber, the National Assembly, where Macron’s party needs allies’ votes for a majority.
If the government fears it will not have enough votes in the lower house, it is still possible for it to push the text through without a parliamentary vote, via a so-called 49:3 procedure.
An additional day of nationwide strikes and protests was planned for Wednesday.
According to the interior ministry, 368,000 demonstrators marched through various cities on Saturday. Authorities had expected nearly 1 million people to take part.
As with previous protests, Saturday’s events were free of any major scuffles with the police.
On Tuesday 1.28 million people took to the streets, the highest turnout since the start of the protest movement, according to government figures.
In a joint statement, French unions, maintaining a rare show of unity since the protest movement was launched at the end of January, called on the government to organize a “citizens’ consultation” as soon as possible.
The unions plan to keep up the pressure “and to keep on proving that the vast majority of the population remains determined to say no to the proposed bill”, they said.
Opinion polls show a majority of voters oppose Macron’s plan and that a slim majority supports the strike actions.
A spokesperson for TotalEnergies said that its strikes continue in the oil major’s French refineries and depots, while its railway operator SNCF said national and regional services would remain heavily disrupted over the weekend.