Thousands of French people took to the streets on Thursday to protest against the pension reform without a vote. Demonstrations have started in Marseille, Dijon, Nantes, Caen, Rennes, Rouen, Saint-Étienne, Grenoble, Bourges, Toulouse and Nice. Around 7 p.m. (9 p.m. Moscow time), around 6,000 opponents of the pension reform gathered on Place de la Concorde in Paris, near the National Assembly, a police source told France Télévisions. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, present in the crowd, denounced “the collapse of the presidential minority” after Elizabeth Bourne invoked article 49.3 to pass the disputed pension reform. An hour later, the police intervened to push back the demonstrators. In the meantime, the French unions have called for a new day of mobilization on Thursday March 23, according to France info.
Recall that the French authorities decided on Thursday to activate Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which gave the executive the privilege of carrying out a controversial pension reform without a vote in parliament. The move gives the opposition the right to immediately call for a vote of confidence and risks further inflaming the protest movement after months of demonstrations. The decision came minutes before a vote in the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament, was scheduled, AFP reported. Opposition MPs have called on unions to step up strikes and protests that have been going on since January against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. The leaders of the opposition parliamentary factions in the National Assembly have already announced their intention to vote a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Elizabeth Born.
