The French Senate has adopted President Emmanuel Macron‘s unpopular pension reform plan in the wake of a seventh day of demonstrations.
The plan, which will see the retirement age raised by two years to 64, was passed by members of the upper house of the French Parliament with 195 votes for and 112 against.
The protests – and rolling strikes that have affected refineries, public transport and garbage collections – aimed to pressure the government to withdraw the pension plan, which it said was essential to ensure the pension system does not run out of money.
“After hundreds of hours of discussions, the Senate adopted the pension reform plan,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on Twitter.
“It is a key step to make a reform happen that will guarantee the future of our pension system.”
Borne said she was “totally committed to ensure the text will be definitively adopted in the coming days”.
Now that the Senate has adopted the bill, it will be reviewed by a joint committee of lower and upper house lawmakers, probably on Wednesday.
If the committee agrees on a text, a final vote in both chambers is likely to take place on Thursday, but the outcome of that still seems uncertain in the lower chamber, the National Assembly, where Macron’s party needs allies’ votes for a majority.
If the government fears it won’t have enough votes in the lower house, it is still possible for it to push the text through without a parliamentary vote, via a so-called 49:3 procedure.
An additional day of nationwide strikes and protests was planned for Wednesday.
According to figures from the interior ministry, 368,000 demonstrators marched through various cities on Saturday.
Authorities had expected up to a million people to take part.
As with the previous protests, Saturday’s events were free of any major scuffles with the police.
On Tuesday, 1.28 million people took to the streets, the highest turnout since the start of the protest movement, according to government figures.
In a joint statement, the French unions, maintaining a rare show of unity since the protest movement was launched at the end of January, called on the government to organise a “citizens’ consultation” as soon as possible.
The unions plan to keep up pressure “and to keep on proving that the vast majority of the population remains determined to say no to the proposed bill”, they said.
Opinion polls show a majority of voters oppose Macron’s plan, while a slim majority supports the strike actions.
A spokesperson for TotalEnergies said strikes continue in the oil major’s French refineries and depots, while public railway operator SNCF said national and regional services would remain heavily disrupted across the weekend.
In Paris, garbage continues to pile up on the streets, with residents seeing a growing presence of rats, according to local media.
By Benoit Van Overstraeten and Forrest Crellin in PARIS
