The French Senate approves the raising of the minimum retirement age and advances the project led by Emmanuel Macron

The French Senate, dominated by the right, approved on Wednesday evening after an intense battle with the left the key article of a pension reform bill which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64. Voting ended with 201 votes in favor and 115 against.

As part of the government plan, the legal retirement age will be gradually raised from 62 to 64 at the rate of three months a year from September 1, 2023 until 2030.

In addition, to obtain a full pension, without discount, the mandatory contribution period will increase from 42 to 43 years by 2027, at the rate of one quarter per year.

France has seen major protest mobilizations against the pension reform promoted by liberal President Emmanuel Macron.

To enter into force, the initiative must still be approved by the two chambers of Parliament, for which they have a deadline of March 26.

If not achieved, the government can enforce its plan through an order, which has never happened.

The French trade unions yesterday obtained the greater mobilization in protests since the start of protests against the pension reform in January, but the strikes have not resulted in the paralysis of the country with which they hoped to compel the government to Emmanuel Macron go back.

A total of 3.5 million people demonstrated in more than 200 concentrations summoned throughout the country, according to the CGT union, while the Ministry of the Interior calculated 1.28 million.

All the surveys of the last few months show a very majority rejection reform (68%, according to an Ifop poll published on Sunday) and support for the unions in their plan to continue the strikes beyond Tuesday (56%, according to another Elabe poll published on Monday).

However, the government has remained firm, arguing that if there is no reform, the system will run an annual deficit of 12,500 million euros in 2030.

“It was a historic day, due to the scale of the strikes and the mobilization,” the main unions said in a joint statement in which they insisted that “the government must withdraw its project”.

The unions have called for a new massive demonstration to next Saturdayand warned that failure to respond from the executive would “inevitably lead to a situation that could become explosive.”

On January 31, the last day of the demonstrations, there were 1.27 million demonstrators across the country (according to the police) and 2.8 million (according to the CGT), for what could be the largest mobilization today. for 40 years.

The processions took place normally, even if, as usual, very minority groups of radicals caused material damage and clashes with the police, particularly in Paris, where there were 43 arrested in start of night.

Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez attributed the clashes and destruction to “extremely radicalized individuals“, according to what he said in statements to the chain BFM

Percentages of strikers were lower than some of the previous five days of protests, the first on January 19.

In the state administration, almost a quarter of the workforce continued the strike, against 28% on January 19; and at the state energy giant EDF they were 41.5% against 44.5% on the same January 19.

In education, the Ministry of Education said it had 32.71% of primary and secondary teachers unemployed.

Beyond these percentages, the truth is that very few railways were running (on average 20% of high-speed trains) and that air traffic controller strikes forced the cancellation of 20% of flights on the Charles de Gaulle and 30% at the other Paris airport, Orly, as well as at Beauvais, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse.

In addition, in various logistics centers and major communication nodes, truck drivers are impeding traffic and creating traffic jams on the access roads to Lille, Perpignan, Rennes, Saint Brieuc or Cannes.

Although refineries are still operating, since they cannot be shut down, production has been reduced in some. But the blockages in the depots prevented the departure of the trucks loaded with fuel. However, service stations will not experience supply problems, at least in the short and medium term.

Three of the four regasification units (two at Fos sur Mer, near Marseilles, and the other at Montoir de Bretagne, near the port of Saint Nazaire) remained inactive, thus preventing the entry of the liquefied gas that France imports through boat.

(With information from AFP and EFE)

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