He french senateThanks to the majority right in the upper house, has supported the delay of the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years, the main point of the pension reform of President Emmanuel Macron. The vote, which lasted until early Thursday morning, took place after Tuesday was the sixth day of mobilizations, the largest since the beginning of the protests in January.
After midnight, 201 senators spoke in favor of which is already the well-known article 7 of the bill that increases by two years the age at which the French will have to wait to be able to assert their rights to retirement, while 115 spoke against and 29 abstained.
The vote came at the end of a parliamentary scuffle that exceeded the 15 hours long and in which that article was discussed, with the left that had presented hundreds of amendments to obstruct the debate and the right resorted to an exceptional device that allows you to skip them.
The Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt He was satisfied but prudent, aware that this partial progress for his project was based on support from the right that will be essential for him to move forward in the conciliation phase between the two parliamentary chambers.
Dussopt considered that it was “a vote of responsibility by the Senate, which has opted to follow the Government”, and expressed his wish that all the articles can be discussed and adopted from now to the deadline for processing in the Senate, midnight on Sunday.
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But the big winner of the night was Bruno Retailleau, head of the parliamentary group of the classic right-wing party The Republicans, whose senators were the fundamental support of Article 7: 127 were in favor and only 2 against.
massive mobilizations
Beyond this vote and the parliamentary process, which could end next week, the great stumbling block for Macron are the mass protests in the street organized by all unions together in an unprecedented union in France.
Last Tuesday the biggest protest took place since the mobilizations began in January: 1.28 million peopleaccording to the Ministry of the Interior, or 3.5 millionAccording to the CGT, they took to the streets all over France and tried to stop the country.
Although the power plants did not paralyze the country -as they had announced-, they have called two new days of action, Saturday 11 and Wednesday 15 March and they asked that Macron receive them urgently, to whom they are demanding the withdrawal of his pension reform project.
Meanwhile, strikes continue in certain sectors, particularly public transport and energy. Rail and air traffic will be interrupted again this Thursday and both today and tomorrow 20% of the flights at Charles de Gaulle are going to be suppressed and 30% in Orly, as well as in Beauvais, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse. Besides, garbage collection in cities like Paris will be irregular.
The workers of Total Energies They voted by a majority to stop production at the Feyzin refinery near Lyon, hardening their strike, which until now had only blocked shipments in the center.
Opinion polls show that majority of voters oppose President Macron’s plan to push the retirement age back to 64, but the government stands firm, saying political change is essential to ensure the system doesn’t go bankrupt.
