Macron’s Contested Pension Reform Heads to Final Votes in Parliament

By Staff, Agencies

A proposed reform of France's pension system, which has sparked massive protests and strikes since the start of the year, is to be put to a vote in parliament on Thursday in a decisive moment for French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Senate and lower house National Assembly are set to hold ballots on the legislation to raise the retirement age to 64, with Macron's minority government dependent on the opposition Republicans [LR] party for support.

After months of negotiations, "everyone wants a moment of truth," a senior figure in Macron's Renaissance party told AFP on condition of anonymity. He conceded that there was a risk that "we might lose."

Support appears almost certain in the upper house Senate, but a majority will be more difficult to find in the fractured Assembly, and the ultimate winning or losing margin could come down to a handful of votes.

"In my group, as well as in the ruling party, there are some MPs who do not want to vote for this reform," the top-ranking Republicans party lawmaker in the Assembly, Olivier Marleix, conceded on Wednesday evening.

The government has argued that raising the retirement age, scrapping privileges for some public sector workers and toughening criteria for a full pension are needed to prevent major deficits building up.

Trade unions have led resistance to the plans since the start of the year, organizing some of the biggest demonstrations in decades, which peaked last Tuesday when an estimated 1.28 million people hit the streets.

They say the reform will penalize low-income people in manual jobs who tend to start their careers early, forcing them to work longer than graduates who are less affected by the changes.

A rolling strike by municipal garbage collectors in Paris over the last week has seen an estimated 7,000 tons of uncollected trash pile up in the streets, attracting rats and dismaying tourists.

The strike affecting around half of the city's districts has been extended until March 20, with private refuse company Derichebourg carrying out emergency collections in some of the worst-affected areas.

Elsewhere, workers from the CFE-CGC trade union in the south of France claimed Wednesday that they had cut the electricity supply to a presidential island retreat in the Mediterranean used by Macron for his summer holidays.

Trains, schools, public services and ports have been affected by strikes over the last six weeks.

Opinion polls show that two-thirds of French people oppose the pension reform and support the protest movement.