France's Pension PlanMacron Pushes French Pension Bill Through Without Full Vote

President Emmanuel Macron, shy of support in Parliament for his contentious proposal to raise the retirement age, used a constitutional measure to enact the bill without putting it to a vote in the powerful National Assembly.

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Roger CohenAurelien Breeden

Roger Cohen and

Reporting from Paris

Here are the latest developments.

President Emmanuel Macron pushed through legislation to raise the retirement age for most workers to 64 from 62 without a vote of lawmakers in the National Assembly on Thursday, a decision that inflamed an already tense confrontation over the measure in France and set the stage for a no-confidence vote against his government.

Mr. Macron’s decision prompted raucous protests inside the assembly chamber, where opposition lawmakers sang the French national anthem and banged on their desks. On the streets protesters pledged to continue their fight against Mr. Macron’s proposal.

The upper house of Parliament, the Senate, approved the bill on Thursday morning. But in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house, Mr. Macron’s party and its allies hold only a slim majority, and did not have enough votes to pass the bill.

A no-confidence vote in the National Assembly is expected to take place within days, most likely on Monday. If it succeeds, it would bring down Mr. Macron’s prime minister and the cabinet, and the pension bill would be rejected. But that is unlikely.

Here is what to know:

  • The decision to use Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, which enables a government to push a bill through the National Assembly without a vote, gives opposition lawmakers 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion against the government, although it is rare for such motions to succeed. The article has been enshrined in law since 1958, but over the past decade it has increasingly been seen as an undemocratic tool used by governments to strong-arm lawmakers.

  • Mr. Macron says France’s pension system is in “an increasingly precarious state” because retirees are living longer and their numbers are growing faster than those of today’s workers, whose payroll taxes finance the system. But his plan has angered a society that reveres retirement and a generous balance between work and leisure. In polls, roughly two-thirds of French people say they disapprove of the plan.

  • Eight large-scale national protests in two months have convulsed France, and a strike by garbage workers has left trash piled neck-high in Paris and other cities.

  • For Mr. Macron, who has spent much of his time since re-election last year focused on diplomatic issues like the war in Ukraine, the pensions issue could be central to his domestic legacy. He cannot run again in 2027, as France’s constitution limits presidents to two consecutive five-year terms.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 1:30 p.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The pension clash reveals a weakened and more isolated Macron.

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President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking on Thursday at the Foreign Ministry in Paris.Credit...Pool photo by Michel Euler

For President Emmanuel Macron, enacting a retirement age of 64 without a full vote in Parliament smacks of the kind of contempt and aloofness of which he has sometimes been accused. Rule by diktat was not the image the French leader wanted to project during his second term. He has tried hard to project a milder Macron, more ready to listen, less inclined to rule alone.

But the two-month confrontation over his pension plan had already revealed a weakened and more isolated president, with fewer allies whom he could trust. The disarray Thursday occurred because Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party does not hold a parliamentary majority. Even the center-right Republicans, who had once pushed for raising the retirement to 65, were hesitant to give Mr. Macron the support he needed as nationwide protests against the measure grew.

Pierre Cazeneuve, a Renaissance lawmaker, blamed the Republicans, torn between their belief in the necessity of the proposal and their dislike of Mr. Macron, for the havoc. With their 61 seats added to the 250 seats held by Renaissance and its two allied centrist parties, the Republicans could have given Mr. Macron a majority.

“We naïvely believed we could count on them,” he said.

Charles de Courson, an independent centrist lawmaker, said, “The government is not merely a minority in the National Assembly, it is a minority in the entire country. And we are a democracy.”

Certainly, France has seemed split down the middle in recent weeks. Short of the government’s being ousted in a no-confidence vote that is expected to be called by Friday, it appears almost certain that labor unions will continue to protest vociferously against the enactment of a major law without a vote by the full Parliament.

On the eve of the government’s decision, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of an alliance of left-wing parties, said: “There will be strikes, there will be continuation of protests, there will be all kinds of things. You know, here were are in France, and it’s not a peaceful country.”

“This government is not worthy of the Fifth Republic,” said Fabien Roussel, the leader of the Communist Party in France. “The brutality with which this reform has been imposed is hard for everyone.”

Mr. Macron has long been convinced that with people living longer and healthier lives, a state-backed system financing retirement from the age of 62 was untenable. He has viewed raising the retirement age as important both for its financial impact and for its symbolism, a statement of French seriousness that will be part of his legacy.

With the war in Ukraine and acute economic pressures likely to endure through this year and beyond, and spending on defense and energy certain to increase, Mr. Macron sees the measure as an essential foundation for a strong and resilient France with a balanced budget, at the core of a Europe of greater “strategic autonomy.”

France is an outlier. In Germany, retirement is at 65 years and 7 months. In Italy it is at 67. Almost everywhere, the age of retirement has risen over 65. Mr. Macron has in effect sought to address an anomaly — only to discover just how attached the French people are to it.

A correction was made on 
March 16, 2023

An earlier version of this post misstated the number of seats held by the Renaissance party. With its two allied centrist parties, it has 250 seats; it does not have 260 on its own.

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Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 1:02 p.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Opponents of the pension bill now have a little less than 24 hours to file no-confidence motions. Several opposition groups in the lower house have already said they will do so, but it is still unclear if there will be several motions or if lawmakers will sign on to a single one. A vote is then expected in the days that follow, most likely for Monday.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 12:21 p.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Macron, unwilling to risk a vote, rams through a pension overhaul and now faces a no-confidence vote.

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Élisabeth Borne, the French prime minister, said, “We cannot gamble on the future of our pensions. The reform is necessary.”CreditCredit...Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Emmanuel Macron of France, worried that Parliament would not approve a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62, opted to ram the legislation through without a full parliamentary vote, a decision certain to inflame an already tense confrontation over the measure.

After three meetings on Thursday with Mr. Macron and a last-minute discussion with her cabinet, Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister, informed the National Assembly, or lower house, of the government’s decision. (The Senate had already approved the bill.) Mr. Macron had said repeatedly that he wished to avoid resorting to the measure, but evidently, he concluded that the risk of a vote was too great.

Heckling and booing and vociferous chanting of the “Marseillaise,” France’s national anthem, greeted Ms. Borne when she arrived at the National Assembly. She had to wait for several minutes before being able to speak.

“We cannot take the risk of seeing 175 hours of parliamentary debate collapse,” Ms. Borne said. She continued: “We cannot gamble on the future of our pensions. The reform is necessary.”

But apparently there was no assurance of a majority for it.

The decision to avoid a vote, which will be regarded by Mr. Macron’s political opponents as anti-democratic even though it is legal, came after two months of enormous demonstrations and intermittent strikes. They revealed the abyss between Mr. Macron, who believes that this “choice of society,” as he once put it, is essential to France’s economic future, and the millions of French people who view the changes as an assault on their way of life.

In effect, Mr. Macron concluded that he did not have the votes and was not prepared to face the acute embarrassment of defeat on an overhaul he has sought since taking office in 2017. A first attempt in 2019 also provoked protests and strikes; it collapsed with the onset of Covid-19.

“This is an extraordinary confession of weakness,” said Marine Le Pen, the leader of the nationalist, extreme-right National Rally party. “It is the expression of the total failure of Emmanuel Macron.”

The government used a measure, known as the 49.3 after the relevant article of the Constitution, that allows certain bills to be passed without a vote. Opposition lawmakers now have 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion.

If the no-confidence motion is rejected, the bill stands and becomes the law of the land. If the no-confidence motion passes — an unlikely scenario because the center-right Republicans who have the votes to tip the balance fear losing seats in an eventual parliamentary election — Mr. Macron’s cabinet has to resign, and the bill is rejected.

Laurent Berger, the leader of the moderate French Democratic Confederation of Labor union, called the decision to ram through the bill “democratic iniquity.” He added that “the government had demonstrated that it does not have a majority to approve increasing the legal retirement age by two years.”

The government used Article 49.3 of the Constitution several times last year to pass budget bills, but the pension bill is a far more contentious and consequential. Because many French people view social solidarity as the core of the national economic model, and because work is widely viewed as a sentence only offset by the pleasures of a retiree’s life, raising the retirement age has become a pivotal test of what society France wants.

Constant MéheutCatherine Porter
March 16, 2023, 12:21 p.m. ET

Constant Méheut and

Reporting from Paris

Protesters Clash With Police Over Retirement Change

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Demonstrators with covered faces threw cobblestones torn from the pavement at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.CreditCredit...Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Angry protesters lit small fires and clashed with police officers clad in riot gear at the Place de la Concorde in central Paris on Thursday after President Emmanuel Macron pushed his pension bill through Parliament without a vote.

Several thousand people had spontaneously gathered there earlier in the day, after the government’s decision was announced, to demonstrate across the Seine River from the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

While the gathering was mostly peaceful throughout the afternoon, the situation took a more violent turn as night fell over the French capital and the police moved in to clear out the Place de la Concorde, a major square in Paris with a famed obelisk in the middle, not far from luxury hotels, the Tuileries gardens and the U.S. Embassy.

Protesters with covered faces threw cobblestones torn from the pavement at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons as they slowly pushed the diminishing crowds into surrounding streets. Some protesters set fire to wood construction fencing and heaps of trash, which has gone uncollected in many parts of Paris over the past week because of a continuing strike by garbage workers.

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Protesters with covered faces throwing objects at the police on Place de la Concorde in Paris, on Thursday.Credit...Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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French police officers responding to clashes that erupted at Place de la Concorde.Credit...Yoan Valat/EPA, via Shutterstock

The scene at the Place de la Concorde earlier in the day was much more jovial, but also seemed to embody how fuzzy the next stage of the battle may be for opponents of Mr. Macron’s pension overhaul.

Thousands of protesters, along with some leftist legislators, gathered on the plaza, in the center of a giant traffic circle in the heart of the French capital. But the crowd was disorganized: Some people tried to generate momentum for a march on the nearby National Assembly, to no avail, while others chanted slogans or just stood by.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the prominent leftist politician, arrived and then quickly disappeared.

Hours after Mr. Macron’s decision to push through his plan to raise the retirement age without putting it to a vote in the National Assembly, many in the crowd expressed anger and vowed to continue fighting a measure that they say erodes a cherished part of France’s social safety net.

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“We will do spontaneous protests across France,” said Isabelle Mollaret, 47, a children’s librarian who held a sign that read, “Macron, you aren’t the boss. We will fight him!”Credit...Catherine Porter/The New York Times
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The protest on the Place de la Concorde already has all the hallmarks of a French demonstration. Union flags and balloons are up. Loudspeakers are blaring music. And, yes, a union truck is selling jambon-beurre sandwiches.Credit...Constant Meheut/The New York Times

Union leaders said earlier on Thursday that they would soon call for more demonstrations, trying to extend what have already been eight nationwide mobilizations against the pension plan in the past two months.

With an absence of clear organization, it was unclear whether the protests would grow into the kind of unbridled social unrest that France has sometimes experienced — such as the Yellow Vest movement in 2018 and 2019 — or would fizzle.

But anger among opponents of the pension plan was growing. In the plaza, where union flags and balloons flew and music blared from loudspeakers, many people said they were committed to continue protesting against the plan — and against a government they see as having shown contempt for them.

“We will do spontaneous protests across France,” said Isabelle Mollaret, 47, a children’s librarian who held a sign that read, “Macron, you aren’t the boss.” She added, “We will fight him!”

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Students protesting against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64, in Paris, on Thursday.Credit...Lewis Joly/Associated Press

A group of students chanted against Mr. Macron, calling him “president of the business bosses.” If students become deeply involved in the protest movement, that could be a bad sign for Mr. Macron’s government. In 2006, widespread student protests against a law introducing a youth jobs contract forced the government to backtrack and repeal the law — exactly what protesters are aiming for now.

Still, the feeling on the plaza was one of a festival, not an angry protest. A woman handed out chocolate. Students sang. A group of women from Attac, a French anti-globalization movement, known as the Rosies, changed the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” to reflect an anti-Macron sentiment and led the crowd in a choreographed dance.

“We are relieved because we know the fight will continue,” said Lou Chesne, 36, an energy-efficiency researcher and one of the dancers.

She noted that the government hadn’t been able to collect enough votes in the Legislative Assembly to pass their law, and instead had to shoehorn it through with a special constitutional tool.

“They are isolated,” Ms. Chesne said.

A correction was made on 
March 17, 2023

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Lou Chesne, an energy-efficiency researcher. She is a woman.

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Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 11:40 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

“Emmanuel Macron, president of the business bosses, we’re coming at you,” a crowd of protesting students is chanting on the Place de la Concorde.

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Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 11:21 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Opponents in the National Assembly, the lower house, are particularly furious because, unlike in the Senate, they did not get to vote on the bill at all. The government used a constitutional tool to speed up debates in Parliament, and the National Assembly failed to wade through thousands of opposition amendments before the imposed deadline.

Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 11:17 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

And there comes the man who has vowed to become prime minister should the government fall and President Macron call new general elections. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed Party and a three-time presidential candidate, just arrived on the Place de la Concorde.

Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 11:24 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a key founder of the far-left France Unbowed party and former presidential candidate, told reporters at the protest in Paris that “this bill that has no parliamentary legitimacy, nor legitimacy in the street.”

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Credit...Constant Meheut/The New York Times
Catherine Porter
March 16, 2023, 11:16 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Protesters have started to assemble in the Place de la Concorde, where historians would note that both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded — along with thousands of others — during the French Revolution. (An earlier version of this update misidentified the king who died at Place de la Concorde. It was Louis XVI, not XVIII.)

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Credit...Constant Meheut/The New York Times

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Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 11:04 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Pierre Cazeneuve, a legislator from President Emmanuel Macron’s party, said he didn’t think that a no-confidence motion would gather enough support to bring down the government. And he may be right: leaders of center-right party Les Republicains, on whose support the success of the motion lies, said that they would not support it.

Catherine Porter
March 16, 2023, 11:01 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

In France, the fight over retirement is a question of national identity.

Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

Monday is line dancing; Tuesday scrapbooking with friends; Wednesday caring for her two grandchildren.

Martine Mirville’s itinerary is an advertisement for retirement in France.

After decades of working, much of it as a secretary, she packed up her desk for the last time, bought an apartment in Granville, a seaside town in Normandy, where her daughter lives, and started the coveted next stage of her life.

“I wake up every morning and say how lucky am I to be here,” said Ms. Mirville, 67, during a break from her Thursday morning gym class. Then, she used a favored French expression that has been echoing across the country in protests this year: “This is the time to enjoy life.”

France’s attachment to retirement is complex, touching on its history, identity and pride in social and labor rights that have been hard won. They will not be easily forfeited, no matter how many times the government argues that changing the pension system is imperative to save it, given the demographic realities confronting the country.

Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 10:43 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

What is Article 49.3 of the French Constitution?

Article 49.3 of the French Constitution enables a government to push a bill through the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, without a vote.

The move is perfectly legal, and it has been enshrined in the Constitution since its inception in 1958 — part of several institutional tools that Charles de Gaulle, then France’s leader, insisted upon in order to rein in the parliamentary instability of France’s Fourth Republic and give the executive stronger control.

But over the past decade, Article 49.3 has increasingly been seen as an undemocratic tool, used by the government to strong-arm lawmakers.

If the government activates Article 49.3, the bill is pushed through without a vote. But there is a cost: Opposition lawmakers then have 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion against the government. At least one-tenth of lawmakers in the lower house have to support the motion for it to go to the floor. Lawmakers vote on that motion in the days that follow.

To succeed, a no-confidence motion must get an absolute majority of votes — more than half of the total number of lawmakers elected to the lower house.

A successful no-confidence motion topples the government — meaning the prime minister and the cabinet, but not the president — and the bill is rejected. If the no-confidence motion fails, the bill stands.

It is exceedingly rare for no-confidence motions to succeed in France, and those that the opponents of the pension bill will file within the next 24 hours are not expected to be any different.

While President Emmanuel Macron’s left-wing and far-right opponents will gladly sign on to a no-confidence motion, many mainstream conservative lawmakers — even those who opposed the pension bill — are reluctant to topple the government.

Mr. Macron has also leaked the threat of dissolving the National Assembly and calling new elections if his government was toppled, and some lawmakers who won tight races do not want to go back to the ballot box. Still, Mr. Macron’s opponents are particularly furious over the pension bill, and they could get more support for a no-confidence motion than they could have before.

Mr. Macron’s government successfully used Article 49.3 multiple times in the fall to pass budget bills. But labor union leaders and other opponents have warned that using it on the pension bill — a far more controversial and consequential piece of legislation — would further inflame tensions and anger protesters who have marched and gone on strike around France over the past two months.

The article, after Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne used it on Thursday, has now been used 100 times since 1958. Michel Rocard, a Socialist prime minister under President François Mitterrand, used it 28 times, the most to date.

The government can use Article 49.3 once only per legislative session on a regular bill, but as many times as it likes on a budget bill — which is how the government decided to file the pension overhauls.

A correction was made on 
March 16, 2023

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of times Article 49.3 of the French Constitution has been used since 1958. It is 100, not 88.

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Catherine Porter
March 16, 2023, 10:37 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The room in the National Assembly where journalists often interview passing lawmakers is an absolute zoo. It is almost impossible to walk around, it is so packed with journalists and lawmakers expounding on camera.

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Credit...Catherine Porter/The New York Times
Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 10:37 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Mathilde Panot, the head of the hard-left party France Unbowed in the National Assembly, said the fight would only intensify from now on. “Today is the first day of the end of Emmanuel Macron’s term,” she said.

Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 10:34 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally party, told reporters after the session that she would support a no-confidence motion against the government. “It is a total failure for Emmanuel Macron,” she said, arguing he had failed to convince the French. Ms. Le Pen lost to Mr. Macron in the second round of last year’s presidential election.

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Credit...Thomas Padilla/Associated Press
March 16, 2023, 10:23 a.m. ET

French lawmakers are furious as they learn they won’t vote.

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Many lawmakers held signs and sang the French national anthem as Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne arrived at the National Assembly in Paris on Thursday.Credit...Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

Lawmakers arriving at the National Assembly are expressing fury at reports that President Emmanuel Macron will ram through his pension reform without a vote of the lower house.

The news reports, quoting sources close to the president, said that Mr. Macron would use a measure known as 49.3 after the relevant article of the Constitution that allows the government to pass certain legislation without parliamentary approval.

“The government’s use of the 49.3 procedure reflects the failure of this presidential minority,” Charles de Courson, a longtime independent lawmaker, told the BFMTV news channel. “They are not just a minority in the National Assembly, they are a minority in the whole country. But we are in a democracy.”

Fabien Roussel, the head of the Communist Party, told reporters at the National Assembly that Mr. Macron’s was “not worthy of our Fifth Republic.”

Opposition lawmakers loudly booed the government ministers as they entered the chamber, where the atmosphere was tense.

When Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne entered the chamber, she was greeted by a mix of applause and boos.

Lawmakers from the hard-left party France Unbowed stood up and started chanting “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem. They hoisted signs reading “Democracy” and “64 years, it’s no!”

They did not stop. A third “Marseillaise” began. Leftist lawmakers were doing everything they could to upend the session.

The atmosphere was wild in the chamber. The prime minister started her speech, announcing that the government would push the bill through without a vote. On the far right, lawmakers shouted, “Resignation.” On the far left, legislators sang the national anthem. It was barely possible to hear the prime minister.

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Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 10:23 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The session is over. The government used Article 49.3 of the Constitution to push through the bill without a vote. Opposition parties now have 24 hours to put forward a no-confidence motion before the bill becomes law.

Catherine Porter
March 16, 2023, 10:22 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The National Assembly chamber is a stunning room — a grand semicircle theater with a gold ceiling and red felt seats. The perch where the speaker sits is flanked by 200-year-old marble statues representing liberty and public order. The room has been a center of democratic debate since the French Revolution. This afternoon, it feels like the scene of a boisterous soccer game.

Catherine Porter
March 16, 2023, 10:23 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne struggled to be heard from the dais over the sounds of opposition lawmakers singing the French national anthem. Some opposition makers banged on their desks and booed.

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Credit...Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
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Credit...Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 10:06 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Fabien Roussel, the head of the Communist Party, told reporters at the National Assembly that Mr. Macron’s actions were “not worthy of our Fifth Republic.”

Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 10:05 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Reactions by opposition lawmakers at the National Assembly were furious. “The government’s use of the 49.3 procedure reflects the failure of this presidential minority,” Charles de Courson, a longtime independent lawmaker, told the BFMTV news channel. “They are not just a minority in the National Assembly, they are a minority in the whole country. But we are in a democracy.”

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Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 10:04 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The president of the National Assembly just entered the chamber. The session started ... and was immediately suspended because members of the government had not shown up yet. Lawmakers shouted in protest.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 10:03 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The media reports, quoting sources close to the president, said Mr. Macron would use a measure known as 49.3 after the relevant article of the Constitution, that allows the government to pass certain legislation without parliamentary approval. To resort to it on a reform this contentious, after massive street protests and intermittent strikes over the past two months, would amount to a considerable political risk. “That would be democratic iniquity,” said Laurent Berger, the leader of the moderate C.F.D.T. labor union. (An earlier version of this update incorrectly described Article 49.3. It allows the government to pass certain legislation without parliamentary approval, not with parliamentary approval.)

Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 10:02 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Members of the National Assembly are trickling into the assembly chamber before what is likely to be a tense session. Many lawmakers from the hard-left party France Unbowed came with folded sheets of paper that they put on their desks, which look like protest signs they will hoist when the session begins.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 9:54 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

President Emmanuel Macron, worried that Parliament would not approve a bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62, has opted to ram the legislation through without a vote, French TV and the Agence France-Presse news agency reported. There was no official confirmation.

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Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 9:46 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Macron met repeatedly with his advisers on Thursday.

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The French Parliament was set to vote on pension changes this afternoon at the National Assembly, but the president pushed it through without a vote from that house.Credit...Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Emmanuel Macron met with his top ministers several times on Thursday at the Élysée Palace, giving the impression of an increasingly panicked French government that was unsure, less than an hour before a possibly decisive session in the National Assembly was due to begin, about how to turn a bill to raise the retirement age into the law of the land.

Go for a risky vote that could humiliate him? Or force the bill through in a way that would smack of contempt for democratic process and reinforce impressions of him as an aloof, top-down leader? The choice before Mr. Macron did not look easy.

If, as seems possible, the French government decides to push the bill through without a parliamentary vote, using a measure known as the 49.3 after the relevant article of the Constitution, an already intense confrontation would be further inflamed.

“That would be democratic iniquity,” said Laurent Berger, the leader of the moderate C.F.D.T. labor union.

Mr. Macron wants to avoid resorting to this measure, but whether he has the numbers in the National Assembly, or lower house, to approve the bill appeared increasingly unclear. The Senate approved the measure earlier in the day.

For Mr. Macron, who has spent much of his time since re-election last year focused on diplomatic issues like the war in Ukraine, getting the legislation passed is crucial for his domestic legacy. He cannot run again in 2027, as France’s Constitution limits presidents to two consecutive five-year terms.

“If the overhaul is approved, it means that Macron has a new political space to reform,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political science professor at Sciences Po in Paris. Mr. Macron, he said, “will, in a way, regain his domestic image as a reform-minded president.”

Failure, on the other hand, would amount to a humiliation for Mr. Macron, who has called the new law a pivotal “choice of society.”

Catherine Porter and Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.

Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 9:46 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

About half an hour before the session was due to begin in the National Assembly, the scene outside was vivid. Protesters chanted fiery slogans, watched by lines of police officers wearing tactical gear. Lawmakers trickled into the 18th-century building wearing tensed faces. Inside the Parliament, a crowd of reporters had swarmed the Room of the Four Columns, which legislators pass through to enter the chamber.

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Credit...Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock
The New York Times
March 16, 2023, 9:39 a.m. ET

‘The Daily’ explores the bitter debate in France.

Millions of people have taken to the streets in France to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62, which would bring the country more in line with its European neighbors. The New York Times podcast “The Daily” looked into why the issue has hit such a nerve in French society.

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: France’s Battle Over Retirement

After months of street protests across the country, the moment has arrived for a pivotal vote on raising the pension age.
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transcript

Listen to ‘The Daily’: France’s Battle Over Retirement

After months of street protests across the country, the moment has arrived for a pivotal vote on raising the pension age.

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

sabrina tavernise

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

Millions of people have taken to the streets in France to stop a government proposal that would raise the retirement age to be more in line with its European neighbors.

speaker

We’re protesting because we don’t want to spend the rest of our life just working without a retirement.

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

sabrina tavernise

Today, as the French parliament votes on the proposal, Paris Bureau Chief Roger Cohen explains why it hit such a nerve in French society and why French President Emmanuel Macron pushed for it anyway.

[THEME MUSIC]

It’s Thursday, March 16.

Roger, Hello.

roger cohen

Hello, Sabrina.

sabrina tavernise

So Roger, I’ve been watching all of these protests in France — millions of people on the street. Help me understand what exactly is going on, why people are so upset.

[BAGPIPES PLAYING]

roger cohen

Well, Sabrina, there’s been an enormous degree of agitation and street protests in France over the last couple of months in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s push to raise the retirement age in France to 64 from 62.

reporter 1

These are new pictures just coming in to us this morning — the scene in the streets, just massive disruption.

roger cohen

The result is that eight times in the last seven weeks, there has been tumult.

reporter 2

Now, people are here once again to say “non” to President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

roger cohen

Massive numbers of people in the street, not only in Paris but throughout France.

reporter 3

French Union workers aiming to shut down critical industries across the nation, walking off the job and into the streets.

roger cohen

The metro or subway is scarcely functioning. Bus service is very limited. You can’t get a hold of the equivalent of the city bikes here. They’re all taken. And because the garbage collection service is on strike, garbage has been piling up into great mountains of trash, over head height. Fortunately, the weather has been cold, so the stink of it is not appalling as it might be.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[FRENCH STREET SOUNDS]

While it’s a very serious protest, the atmosphere has been, on the whole, fairly festive. There’s been very few incidents of actual violence. And the two main labor unions who have been organizing this have kept a pretty good organizational control of what’s happening. So it’s large numbers of people, laughing a lot.

[CROWD SINGING IN FRENCH]

Poking fun at Macron, who is widely hated for what he’s doing, and talking about how life begins when work ends, which is a deeply held French conviction, very different from the American view that life is enriched and enhanced by work.

sabrina tavernise

Exactly, Roger. I mean, I was going to say that in the United States, of course, the retirement age goes up to 67. So this idea that millions of people are out on the streets for a proposal that bumps it up to 64 is really pretty remarkable. So tell us about the French idea of this. What is it, and why is it so different?

roger cohen

There’s a fierce French attachment to the view that this country does not want a brutal form of capitalism — that solidarity and equality are extremely important. In the French national motto, of course, you have [SPEAKING FRENCH]— liberty, equality, and fraternity, or solidarity. And to the French, the idea is pretty deep rooted that, OK, you work for 30 to 40 years.

But at that point, the state owes you your pension and that you work those years because at the end of it, you will enjoy this sort of Nirvana of a time when you no longer have to work. And the French do not see work in positive terms. The word “work”— [SPEAKING FRENCH]— it has a negative connotation.

sabrina tavernise

Oh, really?

roger cohen

Yeah. Yeah. Look, Sabrina, there’s a very large private sector in France that has a lot of big and dynamic companies. And there are many French people who work very hard and work past the retirement age. But a large number of French people take the view that once they retire, that’s when life will really kick in. And the important things, like friendship, love, community, playing a game of petanque or boule at sunset with a glass of pastis, traveling — that is what French people consider to be real life, not work.

sabrina tavernise

Right. So this is a longstanding thing in French society. Why is all of this blowing up now?

roger cohen

Well, it’s blowing up now, Sabrina, because of President Emmanuel Macron and his deeply held personal convictions. He burst on the scene in 2017, becoming president at the age of 39, having been the finance minister. And he always had the belief that French society had to work more to grow more and that there were certain essential reforms that needed to happen.

So he set about notably changing the Labor Code in France to make hiring and firing much more flexible than it had ever been. He set about establishing a tech sector in France. He attracted a lot of foreign investment. And part of this conviction was also that ultimately, the pension system in France would have to change.

sabrina tavernise

And what was the problem he was trying to solve for there, Roger?

roger cohen

The fundamental problem, Sabrina, is that people are living longer, so there are more retirees as a proportion of the population. Whereas you had in the early 1960s, about four active workers for every retiree, that number, by the year 2000, had become 2.1 active workers. Now it’s down to 1.7.

sabrina tavernise

Oh, wow.

roger cohen

And the projection is that it will continue to fall.

sabrina tavernise

So huge difference and really, in effect, imbalance in the number of workers that are supporting every retiree.

roger cohen

If there is no reform to the pension system, there are various projections. But all of them pretty much make clear that within a decade, the pension system would be beginning to pile up a considerable deficit. And that’s a problem because the government would have to borrow money.

It would have less money for other things at a time when it needs to make big investments in a whole range of areas, ranging from defense to energy. A lot of people have suggested, well, why not raise taxes on the rich instead of this measure? But Macron doesn’t want to — he doesn’t want to do that.

sabrina tavernise

So Roger, what does Macron do?

roger cohen

Yeah, so pretty much from the outset, Macron sees France as a radical outlier — that other European countries, notably Germany, had raised the retirement age many years earlier and that this was something that had to be tackled.

emmanuel macron

[SPEAKING FRENCH]

interpreter

I understand that changes can be hard.

roger cohen

He turned to this in 2019.

interpreter

I see how decisions made can, at times, cause worry and opposition. But do we have to give up on changing our country because of that? No.

roger cohen

So Macron decides to propose a significant overhaul of the retirement system.

reporter 4

The government wants to remove 42 different pension schemes and put in place a universal system for all workers.

roger cohen

Macron was looking to give more individual choice to people as to how they contributed and to find ways to cut costs.

reporter 5

The needed remedy for a nation with an aging population or the beginning of the end of France as we know it?

roger cohen

But the reaction from the French was immediate.

reporter 6

The strike against pension reforms has become a record breaker.

reporter 7

Nothing is moving in Paris.

reporter 8

They’re clogging highways, forcing landmarks to shut down.

roger cohen

They didn’t like it, and there were massive strikes and demonstrations. And so the whole idea was mired in that when COVID arrived. And Macron essentially went more or less overnight from somebody deeply concerned with government spending, to the point of wanting this unpopular reform, to somebody who put no limits at all on government spending in order to get through COVID and help people through the crisis. And in the midst of that, that first attempt to reform the pension system fails.

sabrina tavernise

Got it. So he fails to get it done.

roger cohen

And I think it’s been on his mind for the last four years. It stuck in his craw. He didn’t get it through. He wants to get back to it, but COVID goes on. And then there’s the small matter of his reelection, which becomes more complicated because then on top of everything else, the Ukraine war breaks out two months before the election. And he wins the election, but of course, the war has changed the dynamic in other respects.

sabrina tavernise

So there’s this double whammy of COVID plus the Ukraine war, and that makes the problem that Macron has seen for a long time in the French economy that much more urgent, I would think.

roger cohen

Well, he considers it more urgent. Millions and millions of French people don’t think it’s urgent at all. But yes, President Macron wants it. And deficits were run up through the massive spending in fighting COVID.

And Macron is determined that France transition to a green economy, that it increase its defense budget in order to be able to arm Ukraine and also to be in a strong position vis-a-vis Russia that could be aggressive toward Western Europe over the next decade or two. He’s got a whole slew of priorities. And then he thinks to himself, we’re spending more and more on people who are getting older and older, and it doesn’t make sense, just on the basis of sheer mathematics. And something has to be done about it.

And so given all this, he decides to act. And a couple of months ago, the bill is introduced to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62, and this touched a nerve, yet again, in France. And that’s why we have this vote today on the bill, and the vote is going to be very, very close.

[THEME MUSIC]

sabrina tavernise

We’ll be right back.

So Roger, there’s a vote today in the French parliament. What’s going to happen? Lay it out for me.

roger cohen

Well, nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen, but the situation is the following. In essence, Macron needs 289 votes to pass the bill. He has 260 through his Renaissance Party, so he needs another 29. And the only party really prepared to give him any more support is the center right Republicans. Whether they will, in fact, give him the 29 votes is unclear, but the government has been pushing hard to get those votes.

It’s gotten closer and closer as the protests have grown. An expert, whom I spoke to recently — Alain Duhamel — said he would have put the odds of it passing at 80 percent a month ago. Now he’d put it at 60 percent. So it’s not a done deal.

sabrina tavernise

It’s not a done deal, yet he seems to have reasonably good chances of getting it passed, right?

roger cohen

Yeah, he has reasonably good chances. And if, at the last minute before voting begins, he decides that, no, the votes aren’t there, there is an option under the Constitution to push this through without a vote. But the price of that — the political price — would be enormous. The confrontation in France, which is already intense, would, I think, become explosive.

sabrina tavernise

What would it mean if the overhaul did go through — this thing that clearly many, many French people hate.

roger cohen

Well, most fundamentally, if the bill passes, it becomes the law of the country. This does not mean at all that everything is going to quiet down overnight. But Macron’s main concern will be with his legacy. This will be an important part of his legacy. He thinks it’s very important for France.

But he also knows that Marine Le Pen, the far right leader, has criticized him heavily for wanting to, quote, “torture” French people and deny them the promised pleasures of retirement. So she will use this in the years ahead to lambast Macron and try and build her support. And what Macron fears most of all, according to people I’ve talked to, is that he might be succeeded by Marine Le Pen because if Le Pen does come to power and the far right comes to power in France, Macron will be remembered quite substantially as the last president before the far right took over in France, and he doesn’t want to be remembered for that.

sabrina tavernise

Roger, what would happen if this doesn’t pass, if the protesters basically win and the retirement age stays the same at 62?

roger cohen

Well, it would be an acute embarrassment to the government, to the prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, and to the president, to Emmanuel Macron. The government, under the Constitution, would be able to reintroduce the bill, but that’s time limited to about the end of the month. And there’s not much reason to think that if it didn’t pass the first time, it would the second.

I think it would be quite plausible for the government to determine that it was no longer in a position to govern as its policy had been rejected on such a fundamental matter. And you could get a vote of censure in the parliament that brings down the government and leads to new parliamentary elections. So to sum up, the country would be in uncharted waters with a number of unpredictable outcomes.

sabrina tavernise

So Roger, I’m thinking here of France in relation to other high-income countries, like its neighbors in Europe. And they’re all facing the same set of demographic facts — longer lifespans, fewer children, which leads to a real imbalance in their pension systems. But with France — and I mean, the opponents of raising the retirement age in France — it kind of seems like they’re just defying the laws of economic gravity. Neighboring countries have already succumbed to them, but not France.

roger cohen

Well, France has the most elaborate social security, social protection system in the world probably when it comes to health care, when it comes to unemployment benefits, when it comes to retirement. And France, although it’s grown somewhat more unequal, it hasn’t grown exponentially more unequal as in, say, the United States and Britain over the last couple of decades. And the French think there’s still a choice.

They think the kind of capitalism that they see in the United States or some other countries, that is not what they want. They want to preserve their system. But I think this is a state-backed system, and the French feel that the state should look after them. You’re not going to hear French people talking about rugged individualism. Rugged individualism? Forget about it.

sabrina tavernise

Yeah. In some ways, listening to you talk about the French system, as an American, I’m kind of jealous.

roger cohen

[LAUGHS]: Well, as an American in France, I’m enjoying it. But the number of times in France you encounter the phrase [SPEAKING FRENCH]— no, impossible. American, can do. French, no. [SPEAKING FRENCH] And I think that goes to President Macron’s fundamental point.

Last year, he said what we’re facing here is a choice of society. And what I think he meant by that is that in order to remain strong, France has to make the investments I’ve talked about and that France has to work those two years longer and that this is necessary for a strong Europe in a world that is looking pretty combustible, menacing, intensely competitive going forward.

He believes that this is a reform that is essential for France to remain strong, to be dynamic, and to adjust to the new realities of life. The alternative for France does look as if it could be one where the country is clinging to something from a bygone era at the cost of its vitality and dynamism.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

sabrina tavernise

Roger, thank you.

roger cohen

Thank you, Sabrina.

sabrina tavernise

On Thursday in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron, resorted to forcing his proposal through parliament without a vote — a politically risky move that enraged opposition lawmakers who called it undemocratic. In the lower house of parliament, they booed, banged on their desks, and sang the French national anthem. The opposition now has 24 hours to file a no confidence motion. If it is rejected — the most likely scenario — the bill passes and becomes the law of the land.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you should know today. Early Thursday morning, Credit Suisse said it would take an emergency loan from the Swiss Central Bank after fighting for its life on Wednesday when investors dumped its stock over concerns about its financial health. The bank said it would borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs, or about $54 billion, to shore up its finances. Unlike Silicon Valley Bank, a regional bank in the US that collapsed last week, Credit Suisse is considered systemically important in the global financial system. Its troubles on Wednesday spooked investors, prompting a wider sell-off in bank stocks.

Today’s episode was produced by Will Reid, Mooj Zadie, and Nina Feldman. It was edited by Patricia Willens with help from Paige Cowett and Lisa Chow. It contains original music by Diane Wong and Marion Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

[THEME MUSIC]

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Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 9:37 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Mr. Macron’s government used Article 49.3 of the Constitution multiple times in the fall to pass budget bills, but the pension bill is a far more controversial and consequential piece of legislation.

Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 9:38 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

If his government uses the tool, the bill is pushed through without a vote, and opposition lawmakers have 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion. If the no-confidence motion passes -- an unlikely scenario -- Mr. Macron’s cabinet has to resign, and the bill is rejected. If the no-confidence motion is rejected, the bill stands.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 9:08 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

If, as seems possible, the French government decides to push the pension reform bill through without a parliamentary vote, using a measure known as 49.3 after the relevant article of the Constitution, an already intense confrontation will be further inflamed. “That would be democratic iniquity,” said Laurent Berger, the leader of the moderate C.F.D.T. labor union.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 9:09 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

President Emmanuel Macron wants to avoid resorting to this measure, but whether he has the numbers in the National Assembly, or lower house, to approve the bill appeared increasingly unclear. He announced a third meeting with Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne to review the matter.

March 16, 2023, 8:57 a.m. ET

Protesters gather outside France’s National Assembly before the vote.

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Police officers monitored the crowds at the National Assembly in Paris on Thursday as labor unions demonstrated outside.Credit...Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock

PARIS — As lawmakers in France’s lower house prepared to vote on the pension overhaul, protesters, like Alain Ouazana, were gathering outside the National Assembly.

Mr. Ouazana held a sign addressed to lawmakers that read: “Respect your voters. Seventy percent of us are against the pension reform.”

While many in the country believed the bill would pass one way or another on Thursday, he held out hope.

“There is always a choice,” said Mr. Ouazana, 72, a retired I.T. engineer. Around him, a small group of protesters sang a song from the earlier Yellow Vest movement, reminding the arriving lawmakers that they were being watched and that how they voted would be remembered.

“We are here. We are here. Though Macron doesn’t want us, we are here.”

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Alain Ouazana outside the French National Assembly in Paris on Thursday.Credit...Catherine Porter/The New York Times

They were separated from the Parliament building known as the Bourbon Palace, where royalty once lived, by a phalanx of riot police in tactical gear.

Labor leaders were among the protesters.

François Hommeril, the head of the C.F.E.-C.G.C., one of the main unions, said that the vote had “a crucial role to play in stopping a fundamentally unfair reform that is out of touch with the reality of work.” Mr. Hommeril, reading from a joint union statement, said that “the confidence that our fellow citizens can still have in the institutions of the Republic is at stake.”

Another protester, Jean-Baptiste Reddé, who is famous in France for having participated in nearly every demonstration for the past decade, acknowledged that “the bill might pass.” He was holding a sign reading, “Lawmakers, listen to the people.”

Mr. Reddé said that even if the bill passed, the fight would not be over. “We can keep fighting to overturn this vote,” he said. “We must not abandon; we must not give in.”

Labor union leaders also emphasized that it would be unacceptable for the government to use Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, which enables it to push a bill through without a vote.

Philippe Martinez, the head of the C.G.T. union, said it would be “a lack of respect for democracy,” while Laurent Berger, the head of the C.F.D.T. union, said it would “cause a real malaise” in French public opinion.

Opposition lawmakers from the left arriving at the National Assembly said the voting session might get turbulent.

“We’ll be there to make sure we’re heard,” said François Piquemal, from the hard-left party France Unbowed. Multiple incidents have already affected the debate over the pension bill this month, with France Unbowed legislators shouting and interrupting government ministers.

“To force your way through creates anger," Mr. Piquemal said, referring to the government’s unyielding stance over the bill.

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Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 8:47 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

With less than two hours to go before the National Assembly vote, things are still very hazy. Mr. Macron has already met twice with his top allies, without any decision: go ahead with a vote, or push the bill through without one. It might only become clear at the very last minute, when Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne heads to the National Assembly dais.

Roger Cohen
March 16, 2023, 8:43 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

The vote could redefine Macron’s nation and his legacy.

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President Emmanuel Macron of France speaking on Thursday at the Foreign Ministry in Paris.Credit...Pool photo by Michel Euler

With his attempt to overhaul France’s pension system, President Emmanuel Macron has taken on the fierce French resistance to a world of unbridled capitalism, the nation’s deep attachment to social solidarity and the pervasive view that a long and painful sentence of work is offset only by the liberating rewards of a pensioner’s life.

It is an enormous gamble.

“Every country has a soul and the soul of France is equality,” François Hollande, Mr. Macron’s predecessor as president, famously said. Profit remains suspicious to many French people who view it as a subterfuge of the rich. The 1.28 million protesters in the streets of France last week — 3.5 million according to labor unions — had an unequivocal message for Mr. Macron: “Work less to live more,” as one slogan put it.

Mr. Macron, 45, appears unmoved, resolute in his conviction that the change is essential to France’s economic health because today’s workers pay the pensions of a growing number of retirees, who live longer. If France is to invest in the transition to a green economy and in defense at a time of war in Europe, it cannot, in Mr. Macron’s view, pile up deficits financing a retirement age that reflects the shorter life spans of a bygone era.

“It’s simple,” Mr. Macron said last year. “If we do not solve the problem of our retirees, we cannot invest in all the rest. It’s nothing less than a choice of the society we want.”

That may be logical, but the reservoir of sympathy on which Mr. Macron could once depend has evaporated. The pivot point of his second term, still less than a year old and accompanied until now by sense of drift, appears imminent.

He won re-election last year more as a bulwark against Marine Le Pen, the extreme right candidate, than anything else. Europe’s wunderkind is wounded. To some degree, he is vulnerable. Yet he insists, in the quixotic style he has often demonstrated, on the most difficult of changes at a time when 40 percent of French families say they struggle to make ends meet.

Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 8:33 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

Labor leaders gathered in front of the National Assembly to urge lawmakers not to vote for the pension overhaul. François Hommeril, the head of the C.F.E.-C.G.C., one of the main unions, said that the vote had “a crucial role to play in stopping a fundamentally unfair reform that is out of touch with the reality of work.”

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Credit...Mohammed Badra/EPA, via Shutterstock

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Constant Méheut
March 16, 2023, 8:28 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

About a hundred protesters gathered near the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, before the pension bill was to come to a crucial vote there. “We need to show we’re there on the ground, until the last minute,” said Alban Azais, a 42-year-old television producer, who was hoisting the red flag of the C.G.T, France’s second-biggest union.

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Credit...Constant Meheut/The New York Times
Aurelien Breeden
March 16, 2023, 3:34 a.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

France’s Senate approved the pension plan earlier Thursday.

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France’s Senate approved President Emmanuel Macron’s widely unpopular pension bill on Thursday.Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

France’s Senate approved President Emmanuel Macron’s widely unpopular plans to raise the retirement age by two years on Thursday, setting the stage for a decisive, if far more unpredictable, vote in the National Assembly, the lower house, later in the day.

After waves of protests and rolling strikes that disrupted public transportation and left garbage piling up, all eyes were on the National Assembly, where the vote could be extremely close, capping a two-month showdown between the French government and labor unions that is testing Mr. Macron’s political agenda.

Most notably, the legislation would increase the age when most workers are able to retire with a government pension to 64, from 62, prompting hundreds of thousands of protesters opposed to the pension changes to march in cities around France on Wednesday. Smaller demonstrations were expected on Thursday as well.

“We are facing a vote that will determine the next 15 years of our country and of our fellow citizens’ lives, a vote for a generation,” Gabriel Attal, the budget minister, told the French Senate on Thursday. “Do we or don’t we want to guarantee to the soon-to-be 20 million retirees that they can count on a financed pension, so that they can preserve a way of life they are not willing to sacrifice?”

The French government, still uncertain that it has convinced enough lawmakers to pass the bill in the lower house, appeared on edge. Mr. Macron twice convened his top allies for last-minute meetings on Thursday before the vote.

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Demonstrators turned out in Paris on Wednesday for an eighth day of strikes and protests against the government’s effort to raise the retirement age.Credit...Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Leaders of the major labor unions that have been spearheading the demonstrations and strikes were gathering in front of the National Assembly at midday and urged lawmakers to vote against the pension bill.

For Mr. Macron, who has spent much of his time since re-election last year focused on diplomatic issues like the war in Ukraine, getting the legislation passed is crucial for his domestic legacy. He cannot run again in 2027, as France’s Constitution limits presidents to two consecutive five-year terms.

“If the overhaul is approved, it means that Macron has a new political space to reform,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political science professor at Sciences Po in Paris. Mr. Macron, he said, “will, in a way, regain his domestic image as a reform-minded president.”

The parliamentary votes on Thursday came a day after a small committee of 14 lawmakers from both houses agreed on a common version of the pension bill.

The Senate, France’s upper house, had been widely expected to pass the bill, because it is controlled by mainstream conservatives who mostly favor the pension overhaul and already passed a previous version of it.

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For Mr. Macron, getting the legislation passed is crucial for his domestic legacy.Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house, Mr. Macron’s party and its allies have only a slim majority. The outcome of a vote there on Thursday afternoon — or whether there will even be a vote — is still unclear.

At the heart of that uncertainty lies a difficult choice for Mr. Macron.

Is he confident that enough lawmakers will back the bill and let his government go ahead with a vote? That might soften criticism that the government acted undemocratically by using all the constitutional tools at its disposal to rush the bill through, but it could lead to a stinging defeat.

Or will the government use a legal tool to ram the changes through without a vote, guaranteeing passage but fueling anger in the streets? It is a risk at a time when French trust in political institutions is at its lowest point since the Yellow Vest protests of Mr. Macron’s first term, according to a recent study.

“The government has the choice between Russian roulette or the Big Bertha,” Bruno Retailleau, a top senator with the conservative Republican party, has said to sum up the dilemma, referring to Germany’s famous World War I-era howitzer.

Over the past week, the French news media and politicians have been frantically gauging the views of individual lawmakers and counting anticipated votes to assess the bill’s chances in the National Assembly. Arcane parliamentary procedures are suddenly in the spotlight. Lawmakers on the far left even began live-tweeting the proceedings of the small committee of lawmakers that met on Wednesday.

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Members of Parliament left after a committee meeting on Wednesday at the National Assembly in Paris. Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Such gripping parliamentary drama was rare during Mr. Macron’s first term, when his party and its allies had a strong majority that backed almost all of his policies and he had little need to reach across the aisle or engage in last-minute back-room dealings.

Mr. Macron’s government says that as the ratio of workers to retirees decreases, it needs to prevent long-term deficits in the pension system, for which workers and employers pay payroll taxes.

Opponents dispute both the urgency and the method of Mr. Macron’s overhaul, accusing him of chipping away at a cherished right and unfairly burdening blue-collar workers because of his refusal to increase taxes on the wealthy.

In addition to raising the legal retirement age, the bill would abolish special pension rules that benefit workers in sectors like energy and transportation and increase the number of years one must pay into the system to collect a full pension. It would provide some exceptions for those who started their careers young.

Because Mr. Macron’s party, Renaissance, and its allies no longer enjoy an absolute majority in the National Assembly, they have to rely on the Republicans, whose leaders have expressed support for the bill but whose members appear more divided. A handful of lawmakers from Mr. Macron’s own party and its allies have also expressed discomfort with his proposal.

The constitutional tool the government could use to push the bill through — known as the 49.3, after the article of the French Constitution it stems from — lets the government pass a bill without a vote but exposes it to a no-confidence motion. If that motion were to pass, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and her ministers would have to resign, and the bill would be rejected.

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Tear gas was fired during a demonstration in Nantes, as tensions rose across the country in advance of the vote. Credit...Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

While Mr. Macron’s left-wing and far-right opponents would gladly sign on to a no-confidence motion, most Republican lawmakers, even those opposed to the pension bill, are reluctant to topple the government, meaning such a step would most likely fail, letting the pension measure stand.

Protesters marching in Paris on Wednesday denounced any use of Article 49.3, saying it would be a breach of the democratic process. “If they dare to use the 49.3,” one union leader shouted to a booing crowd, “we will hold them responsible!”

Ms. Borne used the tactic several times in the fall to enact finance measures, but the government has said repeatedly that it wants to avoid doing so in this case.

While it is hard to predict the long-term ramifications of the vote on Thursday, Mr. Perrineau, the political analyst, said that past pension protests had often dissipated after Parliament had its say.

“The reform is unpopular, there is a strong protest movement, public opinion more or less supports it, but then the National Assembly votes and the movement fizzles,” Mr. Perrineau said.

In 2010, for instance, President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully raised the legal age of retirement to 62 from 60 despite large street demonstrations.

While polls have consistently shown that roughly two-thirds of French public opinion is against Mr. Macron’s pension overhaul, studies have also found that most people think it will pass.

Catherine Porter and Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

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