French pension reform: What happens next? Macron speaks and more strikes (2024)

French President Emmanuel Macron's contested pension reform was adopted by Parliament on Monday, March 20, after the government survived two motions of no-confidence, with one failing by just nine votes in the 577-seat Assemblée Nationale.

It is however unlikely that this official adoption will defuse the biggest domestic crisis since Macron's re-election last year, with daily protests in cities around the country that have on occasion turned violent. So what can we expect to happen next?

To the bill

The bill now needs to be approved by France's Constitutional council, who rules on the constitutionality of laws. Both the left and the far-right plan to appeal to the institution. Prime minister Elisabeth Borne said she had also asked the Constitutional Council to check the law.

The Constitutional Council will also examine a request for a referendum submitted on Monday by the left on the issue.

Once the text clears these hurdles, it will be signed into law by the President.

To the government

Macron on Tuesday told a meeting of political allies that he did not intend to dissolve parliament or reshuffle his government, a participant told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The participant, who asked not to be named, said the president also planned to snub calls from opponents to call a referendum on his contested pension reforms.

Even after the rejection of the motions of no-confidence on Tuesday, some lawmakers in the opposition still asked for Borne to resign. But the prime minister refused to take the blow for the reform, as she was prepared to do on Thursday after announcing the triggering of Article 49.3 to pass the bill without a vote. "I am determined to continue to carry out the necessary transformations in our country with my ministers and to devote all my energy to meeting the expectations of our fellow citizens," Borne said in a statement to AFP after surviving the votes.

"Elisabeth Borne is democratically still the head of the government," a government spokesperson said, telling Le Monde that the president is "neither deaf nor blind" to what has been playing out.

To Macron

The President's office said Macron is to give a televised interview on Wednesday. He will answer questions by journalists from broadcasters TF1 and France 2 at 1:00 pm, having largely remained silent on the pension changes in the weeks leading up to the stormy parliament session.

To the protest movement

"Nothing will weaken the determination of the workers," the hard-line CGT union said after the adoption of the reform by Parliament.

Police arrested 234 people in Paris alone after Monday night's vote during tense standoffs between protesters and security forces, a police source said, with several groups burning trash bins, bikes and other objects. Similar scenes were reported in other French cities, including Dijon and Strasbourg – where protesters smashed the windows of a department store, AFP correspondents said.

A new round of strikes and protests has been called on Thursday and are expected to again bring several sectors, such as transport, to a standstill. A rolling strike by rubbish collectors in Paris and some other cities has been leading to unsightly and unhygienic piles of trash accumulating in the French capital.

The government also said Tuesday that it would requisition workers at a fuel depot in Fos-sur-Mer near the southern city of Marseille, as petrol stations across the country start to go dry during a strike by refinery workers.