France’s government pushed the controversial pension reform through parliament without a final vote. On Thursday, she decided to implement President Emmanuel Macron’s most important reform project with a special article in the constitution without a vote in the National Assembly. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said, accompanied by loud protests from the opposition: “This reform is necessary.” The Senate, as the second chamber of parliament, voted in the morning for the reform to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. Approval in the National Assembly, however, did not seem certain. The project can theoretically still be overturned by a vote of no confidence.
Currently, the retirement age in France is 62 years. In fact, retirement begins later on average: those who have not paid in long enough to receive a full pension work longer. At the age of 67 there is then a pension without a deduction, regardless of the payment period – the government wants to keep this, even if the number of payment years required for a full pension is to increase more quickly. She wants to increase the monthly minimum pension to around 1,200 euros. With the reform, the government wants to close an impending gap in the pension fund.
Controversial form of pension: unions consider it brutal and unfair
The center government now has to reckon with a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly. The opposition had threatened that the government should use the special article to avoid a vote in the lower house. The government does not have an absolute majority in the National Assembly. They counted on the support of the conservative Républicains for the reform. Until recently, however, it was unclear whether enough MPs from the split parliamentary group would approve the project. The government probably didn’t want to take that risk.
The pension plans were not only extremely controversial in Parliament. The unions consider them brutal and unjust. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest for weeks. Strikes caused chaos in rail and air traffic, mountains of rubbish on the streets and canceled lessons. According to the Ministry of the Interior, more than a million people took part at the peak of the protests, and the CGT trade union spoke of 3.5 million participants.
