The French Constitutional Council this Friday endorsed the essence of the draft revision of the pension law, one of the main objectives of Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential term, against which trade unions, opposition and demonstrators have been protesting for months.
Members of the Constitutional Council criticized some secondary aspects of the diploma, but did not change the main measure, which raises the legal retirement age in France from 62 to 64, according to a statement from that body.
The decision of the nine “wise men” of the Constitutional Council, guardian of the French democratic institutions, thus paves the way for the entry into force of the unpopular law that Macron wants to see applied from the “rentrée”.
On the other hand, unsurprisingly, the Council has spoken out against a number of minor issues in the revision of the pension law and blocked a joint-initiative referendum project at the request of the left-wing opposition, which was waiting for the ‘green light’ to collect 4.8 million signatures to hold a consultation with the French that was intended to advance the government project of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
The Council’s decision is intended to “close” a chapter, in the words of the head of state who, even before the verdict, had invited the trade union federations to a meeting on Tuesday, with a view to redressing a -existing dialogue in the three months or so that the crisis of national opposition to the revision of the pension law lasted.
With this easing, the executive hopes to overcome the social crisis that has plagued the country since mid-January and resume the advance since Macron’s second five-year presidential term, which has been severely hampered from the start.
The decisions of the French Constitutional Council, which suspended the social movement and the political class for several weeks, cannot be appealed.
With this decision, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, believed that the pension reform had reached “the end of its democratic process”.
#Portraits | Le @Conseil_constit a jugé, tant sur le fond que sur la procedure, la réforme conforme à notre Constitution.
Le texte arrive à la fin de son démocratique processus.
Ce soir, il n’ya ni vainqueur, ni vaincu.
– Élisabeth BORNE (@Elisabeth_Borne) April 14, 2023
“With this reform, our pension system will be in balance in 2030. The government’s wish is now to continue consultations with the social partners in order to give more meaning to work, improve working conditions and achieve full employment,” said the French government.
“The battle continues,” promises the leader of the radical left
The Labor Minister welcomed the decision, which he said “marks the end of the diploma’s legislative and democratic journey” “after several months of consultation and debate in Parliament”.
In the message published on Twitter, Olivier Dussopt promises a dialogue with the social partners to “improve working conditions and achieve full employment”.
️ Je me felicite de la decision du @Conseil_constit qui confirme l’essentiel du projet de loi therefore de réforme des retreates.
This decision marks the last draft law and the democracy of the reforme après plusieurs mois de concertation et de debates au parliament.
– Olivier Dussopt (@olivierdussopt) April 14, 2023
Marine Le Pen, spokesman for the parliamentary group of the far-right RN party, said the fate of the pension reform bill was “not yet decided”. for what he asks voters to prepare the alternative to power that will make this reform “unnecessary and unfair”.
If the decision of the constitutional council determines the order of the institutions, the kind of policy of the reform of the retreats is n’est pas scellé.
—Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 14, 2023
The leader of the left-wing party Submissive France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, assures that “the struggle continues”. He defended on social networks that with this decision the Constitutional Council is “more attentive to the needs of the presidential monarchy than to those of the sovereign people”.
The decision of the constitutional council of montre est plus attentif aux besoins de la monarchie présidentielle qu’à ceux du peuple souverain. La lutte continua et doit reassembler ses forces.
– Jean-Luc Melenchon (@JLMelenchon) April 14, 2023
Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel appealed to the executive to “not promulgate” the law approved by the Constitutional Council.
“I fear a social outburst, today I fear a flood,” he warned, and when several demonstrations against the project were marked by violence, fires in the streets and strong police action.
“If it passes, the president will not be able to continue to run the country,” said Mathilde Panot, head of the radical left party France Insubmissa (LFI).
“The mobilization continues more than ever and we will not let this reform continue in its path,” he said, as the demonstrations, with the participation of hundreds of thousands of people since January, seem to lose their initial spark.
On the contrary, the head of the traditional right, Eric Ciotti, appealed to “all political forces” to “accept” the decision, as “the censorship of several articles [pelo Conselho] punishes the errors of the method of the government”.
French trade unions call on Macron not to implement pension reform
French trade unions, however, appealed to Emmanuel Macron not to implement the pension reform endorsed by the Constitutional Council and indicated that they refuse to meet the executive before May 1.
“Faced with the massive rejection of this proposal, the union solemnly asks you not to promulgate the law, the only way to calm the anger expressed in the country,” reads a communiqué from the CGT trade union center .
Same source “not accepting meetings with the executive branch” until May 1, Labor Day, for which he called for “an exceptional mobilization day”.
The revision of the pension law – a project promoted by the French President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, which raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 years without financial sanctions – was approved without a vote in the National Assembly, using a provision that in the French constitution, which allows you to do this.
The French Interior Ministry estimated that on Thursday, the 12th day of protests against the pension law, about 380,000 protesters took to the streets in France, while the CGT union numbered “more than 1.5 million”.
For both the authorities and the unions, today’s protests seemed to be a sign of a withdrawal in mobilization in most of the country’s cities.
News updated at 19:40
Source: DN
