Deadline looms for vote on French pension reform after fifth day of strikes

Though fewer people mobilised on Thursday, France's fifth day of strikes against an overhaul of the pension system, trade unions hope to keep pressure on lawmakers as the deadline approaches to vote on the core of the contested reform: raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old.

A protester at a march in Paris against the government's proposed retirement reform holds a sign against raising the minimum retirement age to 64 years old, 16 February 2023. © Christophe Ena/AP

As two-thirds of school districts are on winter holidays, fewer people went on strike or took part in demonstrations on Thursday compared to previous strike days.

While trains and the Paris metro were running almost normally at midday, air travel suffered its biggest disruptions to date as more air traffic controllers went on strike.

In anticipation, France’s aviation authority asked airlines to cancel 30 percent of flights at Orly airport in Paris, and 20 percent in other large cities.

For those schools in session, only half as many teachers are on strike as they were last Tuesday, according to the education ministry.

Police were expecting 450,000 to 650,000 people in the streets on Thursday, about half as many as came out on Saturday.

By midday, as the Paris march was getting underway, numbers were down in other cities across the country.

Pressure on parliament

Trade unions say the goal is to pressure lawmakers in the lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly, who have been debating the pension reform law since Monday of last week.

They have until midnight on Friday to vote before the legislation is automatically sent to the Senate.

The unions sent a letter to all but the far-right National Rally MPs asking them to reject the reform, “and more particularly, its article 7”, which raises the minimum legal retirement age to 64 years old.

• Will raising retirement age solve France’s problem with employing seniors?

🔴 #RéformeDesRetraites

Suivez la suite de l’examen du projet de loi de financement rectificative de la Sécurité sociale pour 2023.
Reprise après l'article 2.
En savoir plus ➡️ https://t.co/21uwMFFQag#DirectAN https://t.co/w6eQhaYW2v

— Assemblée nationale (@AssembleeNat) February 16, 2023

But the question will be if lawmakers will even get to debate article 7, as they have barely gone through half of the legislation, having been slowed down by 20,000 amendments introduced by the opposition.

The left-green Nupes coalition this week withdrew several thousand of its amendments to speed up the debate.

Communist lawmakers withdrew 350 on Thursday, and the Socialist group withdrew 90 percent of its amendments on Wednesday.

But between 4,000 and 5,000 remained by midday Thursday and the debate is proving slow, with sticking points on financing pensions and how to make the system fair for those who have worked the longest.

Shutting down France

After Friday's deadline, the bill is be sent to the upper house for debate starting 27 February, before a joint commission of the two chambers must agree on a final version of the bill on 15 March.

In the meantime, unions say they will shut down the country on 7 March if the reform is not abandoned.

"On 7 March, we block everything. Everything must stop everywhere,” said the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from Montpellier on Thursday.

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