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There is only one day left for the so-called “wise men” of the Constitutional Council to decide if the controversial pension reform promoted by President Emmanuel Macron is constitutional or not. Meanwhile, the strike and the street put pressure on the twelfth day of protests.
Discontent with the Pension Reform continues to burn throughout France. Macron’s ironclad position and the failure of the dialogues between the unions and the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, have only managed to accumulate more strikes and street demonstrations. This Thursday is the twelfth day of these protests, awaiting the decision of the Constitutional Council that will announce whether the text of the retirement reform – which proposes delaying the retirement age from 62 to 64 years – is online or not with the French constitution.
“This is not the time to give in, it is what Macron and Élisabeth]Borne are waiting for. We must continue to show that the people are against the reform,” Johan Chivert, a Toulouse student, told AFP on Wednesday.
Although the mobilization came to count on March 7 with between 1.28 million protesters, according to the police, and 3.5 million, for the CGT union, it has fallen since then and, this Thursday, the authorities expect between 400,000 and 600,000. The strike in key sectors such as transport and energy is also less far-reaching, although Parisian garbage collectors have announced to resume their strike, after a previous three-week strike left up to 10,000 tons of rubbish piled up on the streets. Despite the rejection of the union and a majority of French, according to polls, the French government refuses to withdraw its reform and now awaits the decision of the Constitutional Council, which if validated would open the door to its promulgation.
President Laurent Fabius and the other eight members of the Constitutional Council, including former Prime Minister Alain Juppé and former Minister Jacqueline Gouraud, will have to decide two aspects of the reform: on the one hand, the conformity of the procedure used to approve it And here the The Council must focus on article 49.3 of the French Constitution, the resource used by Emmanuel Macron to approve the law without waiting for a vote by the National Assembly, where he knew he did not have enough votes. Was it constitutional to have approved the pension reform through 49.3? The “wise” will say.
But there is also the evaluation of the text itself. And in this sense there are numerous questions to answer: is it possible to have a pension reform in a social security financing text? Are the provisions contained in the law in accordance with the Constitution? The Constitutional Council must, then, assess the law in form and substance to give its verdict this Friday, April 14.
“The country must continue to move forward,” said President Macron during a press conference in Amsterdam on Wednesday, where he announced that he would propose a meeting with the social partners to see how to “move forward” regardless of the institution’s decision. But the task does not seem easy. The social conflict is entrenched in France and each party camps in its positions. In addition, the relationship has been strained in recent weeks between Macron and union leaders, especially with the moderate Laurent Berger, of the CFDT.
The unions accuse the president of not listening to the rejection and of imposing the reform by decree, fearing that he will lose the vote in Parliament, causing in their opinion a “democratic crisis” and benefiting the far-right Marine Le Pen, who is rising in the polls .