Raising the retirement age by two to 64, a highly controversial move in France, is one of President Macron’s most important projects.
(Photo: AP)
Paris French President Emmanuel Macron pushed the pension reform through parliament without a vote. This is reported by several French media unanimously. Accordingly, the special constitutional article 49.3 was applied, with which the government can bypass the parliament. Experts expected new protests in this case.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne defended the decision on Thursday in the French parliament amid vehement protests from the opposition. Opponents of the reform sang the French national anthem, and dozens left the meeting room in protest.
In the National Assembly, which was due to vote in the afternoon, the government was in a precarious position: it would have been dependent on votes from the conservative Republican (LR) camp and from centrists, whose support was uncertain. The head of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, said on television that a vote was “very, very, very risky” because of the non-guaranteed majority.
A mediation committee of the two chambers of parliament worked out a compromise line on Wednesday, on the basis of which the Senate nodded the proposal. However, if the motion fails in the National Assembly, this could provoke a government crisis and probably lead to the prime minister’s resignation.
Raising the retirement age by two to 64, a highly controversial move in France, is one of President Macron’s most important projects. The plans of the head of state, who wants to make the pension system future-proof, have repeatedly led to mass protests and strikes in recent weeks – including a continuing failure of the garbage disposal in Paris. The strikes hit the energy sector particularly hard.
In France, there have been repeated attempts by the respective governments to reform the pension system in recent decades – it is one of the most generous and expensive in Europe. The reform has therefore been in the air for years and has been considered a key project by Macron since he took office in 2017. He broke off an earlier attempt to do so in 2020 in view of the coronavirus pandemic.
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