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London: Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise France’s retirement age has cleared its final hurdle after the nation’s highest constitutional authority endorsed most of the proposed law, delivering a much-needed political win for the embattled president after months of protests.
Security measures were put in place throughout central Paris on Friday ahead of the highly anticipated verdict at the constitutional council building at Palais Royal, while unions and student groups held protests across the city, in Toulouse, Lyon and elsewhere.
Protestors march during a demonstration against pension reform in central Paris.Credit: Bloomberg
The nine-member council ruled that most of the proposed law – which increases the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 to secure a state pension – was valid under the constitution and enacted legally. Macron can now enact the bill within 15 days.
Macron and his Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, are now likely to seek to move on from a troubled three months when millions turned out to protest and strike – some violent – against their plan to shore up the finances of France’s costly and complex pensions system.
The pensions protests — which began in January with strikes that paralysed oil refineries, disrupted trains and schools and caused nuclear power reactors to lower their output — took a more intense turn in mid-March when the reform was pushed through parliament.
Macron’s government survived two votes of no confidence filed by opposition parties in parliament, but marches and walkouts organised by the unions gave way to more spontaneous nightly demonstrations and clashes with police in cities like Paris and Bordeaux, as protesters set fire to piles of uncollected garbage.
The pushback prompted the postponement of a state visit from King Charles III in March and became a political crisis for Macron. However, the numbers of protesters and striking worker numbers have fallen lately, fuelling the government’s hopes that they could wait out the anger.
The council said it had rejected six aspects of the law that it said did not belong in a budget bill, including a so-called “senior” index to measure companies’ progress on keeping older people in the workforce.
It also rejected arguments by the opposition that the government had abused parliamentary procedure by adding the reform to a social security budget bill to shorten debate, and by overriding politicians to pass it without a vote using the so-called 49.3 clause of the constitution.
It also rejected calls for a referendum on the issue from the left-wing opposition.
French President Emmanuel Macron in March. Credit: AP
The constitutional council said in a statement on Friday: “Although the measures related to the pensions reform … could have been introduced as an ordinary law, the government’s choice to embed them as an addendum to the [social security law] is not in itself a breach of any constitutional obligation.”
Borne, whose future in the role has been thrown into doubt amid the controversy, attempted to draw a line under the fight, saying there were “no winners nor losers” in light of the ruling.
“The law has reached the end of its democratic process,” she said in a tweet.
She had met with labour unions in recent weeks, offering new talks over a separate set of proposals to improve working conditions and pay. Macron has also invited them to a meeting at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday.
The issue has bitterly divided French society and united Macron’s opponents against him across the political divide.
Far-left parliamentary leader Mathilde Panot vowed to continue fighting the reform, telling the National Assembly that the “blockage of the country will remain total after this decision”.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said the adoption of the pensions reform “marked the definitive break between the French people and Emmanuel Macron” and promised to repeal the measure if she took power.
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