(Finance) – The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will promulgate the pension reform within 48 hours. The French Constitutional Council in fact, he gave the green light to the essential provisions of the reform by rejecting the request of 250 French opposition MPs to hold a shared initiative referendum, in particular on the most contested article which increases the retirement age from 62 to 64. “The Constitutional Council – writes the French premier Elisabeth Borne in a tweet – he deemed the reform compliant with our constitution. The text of the law reaches the end of its democratic process. He tonight there are no winners or losers.
The decision of the Constitutional Council which validated a large part of the pension reform has unleashed a protest which is being organized throughout France with chants, smoke bombs, protest slogans against Macron and against the government. In Paris, clashes are underway: a first procession left from the Hotel de Ville, the Town Hall where the demonstrators had gathered after the approval of the Constitutional Council for a large part of the pension reform, directed to the place de la Concorde. After a few tens of meters on rue de Rivoli, the first smashed shop windows, stones thrown and police charges. Black-masked youths torched an entire parking lot of dozens of rental electric bicycles, causing the batteries to explode.
THE french trade unions, united against the pension reform, they are appealing to Macron not to promulgate the disputed law. The neo-secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet he reported that the social partners will not accept meetings with the executive before May 1st. The French unions have asked the workers to fight for one “exceptional mobilization” for next May 1st, Labor Day.
After the green light of the French sages to the pension reform, the radical leftist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he condemned a decision that shows a Constitutional Council “more attentive to the needs of the presidential monarchy than to those of the sovereign people. The fight continues, – he said – we must gather strength”.
“If the decision of the Constitutional Council closes the institutional sequence, the political fate of the pension reform is not decided – is the comment of Marine Le Pen –. The people always have the last word, it will be up to the people to prepare the alternative that will come back to this useless and unjust reform”.