The French president, Emmanuel Macron, promulgated this Saturday the modifications to the law that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 years, after the Constitutional Council validated most of the text.
The reform, which triggered a strong protest in the streets, was published this morning in the Official Gazette, according to the French news agency AFP.
After the decision of the Constitutional Council on Friday, the unions asked Macron “not to promulgate the law”, but the president did not accede to the request.
Macron had 15 days after the validation of most of the reform measures by the Constitutional Council to stamp his signature and thus make the law applicable.
In the first paragraph of the code, “sixty-two” has been replaced with “sixty-four”.
The Constitutional Council validated most of the pension reform, but invalidated six articles, especially two related to promoting the hiring of workers over 55 in large companies.
In the opinion of the Constitutional Council, these articles had no place in a law on the financing of Social Security.
The constitutionality control body also rejected a request for the pension reform to be submitted to a citizen initiative referendum.
To overcome the uncertainty in the parliamentary vote, Macron resorted to an article of the Constitution that allows a pension law to be approved without submitting it to a vote in the National Assembly.
“There is no winner or loser,” said the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, referring to the “end of the institutional and democratic path” of the text adopted in the National Assembly after using the article in question.
Macron’s initiative has received strong opposition from unions and protests continued in several French cities on Saturday night.
In Paris, street furniture was burned, including some 30 garbage cans, and clashes between police and protesters resulted in 112 arrests, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
Rennes, in north-eastern France, was another city that saw notable riots, with hundreds of youths setting fire to the door of a police station and the entrance to an old religious building.
Source: TSF
