French gov’t survives no-confidence votes over pension reform

The French government has narrowly survived two votes of no-confidence in parliament after President Emmanuel Macron pushed through a pension reform that was met with fierce opposition from workers and some politicians.

The motions on Monday were tabled by lawmakers who were infuriated by Macron’s decision last week to bypass parliament and raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 by using special constitutional powers.

A first multiparty motion was rejected by nine votes while the 577-seat National Assembly overwhelmingly rejected a second motion brought by the far right. With the failure of both votes, the pension change is considered adopted. It will now go to the Constitutional Court for review and could become law in the coming days.

The tight result in the first vote led some left-wing lawmakers to immediately call for Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to resign.

“Only nine votes are missing … to bring both the government down and its reform down,” hard-left lawmaker Mathilde Panot said. “The government is already dead in the eyes of the French. It doesn’t have any legitimacy anymore.”

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said her group would file a request for the Constitutional Council to examine the bill on Tuesday and possibly censure it.

Macron says the pension reform is needed to keep the system from diving into deficit as France’s population ages.

But critics of the reform disagree, saying it places an unfair burden on low earners, women and people doing physically demanding jobs. Opinion polls have consistently shown that two-thirds of French people oppose the changes.

Opposition to the bill has reverberated on the streets. French workers have been protesting for weeks and have pledged to continue to ramp up pressure on the government and eventually push it to scrap the law.

“The political battle is not over,” Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler said.