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Protests rock France after Macron rams through pension reform
CGTN
Riot police form a security cordon during a demonstration after the French government pushed a pension reform through parliament without a vote in Nantes, France, March 16, 2023. /CFP
Riot police form a security cordon during a demonstration after the French government pushed a pension reform through parliament without a vote in Nantes, France, March 16, 2023. /CFP

Riot police form a security cordon during a demonstration after the French government pushed a pension reform through parliament without a vote in Nantes, France, March 16, 2023. /CFP

Protests erupted in Paris and other French cities after French President Emmanuel Macron's government on Thursday rammed a controversial pension reform through parliament without a vote.

Thousands gathered in front of the parliament in the historic Place de la Concorde in central Paris, watched over by riot police.

"I'm outraged by what's happening. I feel like I'm being cheated as a citizen," said Laure Cartelier, a 55-year-old schoolteacher who had come to express her outrage. "In a democracy, it should have happened through a vote."

Several stores were looted during protests in the southern city of Marseille while clashes between protesters and security forces also erupted in the western cities of Nantes and Rennes as well as Lyon in the southeast.

The number of detainees connected to the protests against pension reform in the center of Paris has risen to 217, French news channel BFMTV reported.

The move to use a special constitutional power enabling the government to pass legislation without a vote amounted to an admission that the government lacked a majority to hike the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The Senate had adopted the bill earlier on Thursday, but reluctance by right-wing opposition MPs in the National Assembly to side with Macron meant the government faced defeat in the lower house.

"We can't take the risk of seeing 175 hours of parliamentary debate come to nothing," Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told MPs as she announced the move amid jeers and boos from opposition MPs who also sang the national anthem.

Unionists of the French union General Confederation of Labour walk through makeshift roadblocks as they block the access to oil terminals at the Total Energies refinery to protest the government's proposed pension overhaul in Donges, France, March 16, 2023. /CFP
Unionists of the French union General Confederation of Labour walk through makeshift roadblocks as they block the access to oil terminals at the Total Energies refinery to protest the government's proposed pension overhaul in Donges, France, March 16, 2023. /CFP

Unionists of the French union General Confederation of Labour walk through makeshift roadblocks as they block the access to oil terminals at the Total Energies refinery to protest the government's proposed pension overhaul in Donges, France, March 16, 2023. /CFP

'Total failure'

Trade unions and political analysts had warned that adopting the legislation without a vote - by invoking article 49.3 of the constitution - risked radicalizing opponents and would undercut the law's democratic legitimacy.

"It's a total failure for the government," far-right leader Marine Le Pen told reporters. "From the beginning the government fooled itself into thinking it had a majority."

According to polls, two-thirds of French people oppose the pension overhaul.

"When a president has no majority in the country, no majority in the National Assembly, he must withdraw his bill," added Socialist Party chief Olivier Faure.

Some opposition parties including Le Pen's are set to call a no-confidence vote against the centrist government on Friday, but Borne's cabinet is expected to survive, thanks to backing from the right-wing Republicans party.

Unions immediately called for another day of mass strikes and protests for next Thursday, calling the government's move "a complete denial of democracy".

Opinion polls showed that roughly eight out of 10 people opposed legislating in this way, while a growing number of people were losing faith in French democracy, said Antoine Bristielle, a public opinion expert at the Fondation Jean-Jaures think-tank.

(With input from AFP)

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