Constitutional Council: No referendum on pension reform in France

The opponents of the controversial pension reform in France have failed with another attempt to overturn the long-decided plan. The Constitutional Council in Paris has also rejected a second opposition request for a referendum.

There are no longer any great prospects for the opposition or the unions to stop President Emmanuel Macron’s reform after all.

As early as mid-April, the Constitutional Council had rejected an initial request for a referendum on capping the retirement age to 62 as inadmissible. He had also found the reform to be fundamentally legal. In this respect, the second application was given little chance of success.

The retirement age is gradually increasing to 64 years

With the reform that Macron has now put into effect, the retirement age will gradually increase from September 1 to 64. But protests against the project continue. Most recently, on May 1st, there were mass demonstrations against the reform. On June 6, the unions again called for demonstrations.

Meanwhile, Macron and his government are hoping for the situation to calm down and want to move on to other issues as quickly as possible. In order to regain more trust among the population, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne presented a 100-day program with improvement steps in areas such as education, health and internal security a week ago.

As with the pension reform, the government is in a bind, having lost an absolute majority in parliament since last summer’s elections. Borne therefore postponed a new migration law until the fall.

decision of the Constitutional Council