French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise France’s retirement age from 62 to 64 has been enacted into law, after months of mass protests.
Hundreds of union activists and others gathered in Paris to protest the ruling on Friday evening, before some groups broke off in marches toward the Bastille plaza and beyond, setting fire to rubbish bins and scooters as police fired tear gas or pushed them back.
Unions and Mr Macron’s political opponents vowed to maintain pressure on the government to withdraw the Bill, and activists threatened scattered new protests on Saturday.
Mr Macron’s office said he would enact the law in the coming days, and he has said he wants it implemented by the end of the year.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said Friday’s decision ‘marks the end of the institutional and democratic path of this reform’, adding that there was ‘no victor’ in what has turned into a nationwide stand-off and France’s worst social unrest in years.
The council rejected some measures in the pension Bill but the higher age was central to Mr Macron’s plan and the target of protesters’ anger.
As tensions mounted hours before the decision, Mr Macron invited unions to meet with him on Tuesday no matter what the Constitutional Council decision was, his office said.
But union leaders rejected Mr Macron’s invitation, noting that he had refused their previous offers of a meeting, and called for mass new protests on May 1, which is international workers’ rights day.
France’s main labour unions, which have organised 12 nationwide protests since January in hopes of defeating the plan, have vowed to continue fighting until it is withdrawn.
The government said requiring people to work two years more before qualifying for a pension is needed to keep the pension system afloat as the population ages.
But opponents proposed raising taxes on the wealthy or employers instead – and said the change threatens a hard-won social safety net.
Opinion polls show Mr Macron’s popularity has plunged to its lowest level in four years.
In a separate but related decision, the Constitutional Council rejected a request by left-wing lawmakers to allow for a possible referendum on enshrining 62 as the maximum official retirement age. The council will rule on a second, similar request, next month.
Carl Pfeiffer, a 62-year-old retiree protesting outside City Hall, warned that the council’s decision will not spell the end of tensions.
The council members ‘are irresponsible, because the anger that will come right after in the country, it’s their fault’, he said.
Bartender Lena Cayo, 22, said she was disappointed but not surprised by the decision.
‘We are protesting for so many weeks and the government didn’t hear us,’ she said.
‘Workers who have gone on strike or protested the legislation since January are fighting for their rights, but nothing changes.’
The centrist president, who made raising the retirement age a priority of his second term, plans to make a televised national address on Monday evening, his office said.
‘The president’s remarks are very much awaited’ and will seek to appease tensions in the country and explain decisions that have been made in the past months regarding the pension reform, Mr Veran said.
Mr Macron was first elected in 2017 on a promise to make France’s economy more competitive, including by making people work longer.
Since then, his government has made it easier to hire and fire workers, cut business taxes and made it more difficult for the jobless to claim benefits.
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