PARIS – The French Senate on Saturday night adopted President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pension reform plan in the wake of a seventh day of demonstrations that were not as large as the authorities had expected.

A total of 195 members of the Upper House of the French Parliament voted for the text, whose key measure is raising the retirement age by two years to 64, while 112 voted against it.

The protests – and rolling strikes that have affected refineries, public transport and garbage collection – aimed to pressure the government to withdraw the pension plan, which it said is essential to ensure the pension system does not run out of money.

“After hundreds of hours of discussions, the Senate adopted the pension reform plan. It is a key step to make a reform happen that will guarantee the future of our pension system,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on Twitter.

She added that she was “totally committed to ensure the text will be definitively adopted in the coming days”.

Now that the Senate has adopted the Bill, it will be reviewed by a joint committee of Lower and Upper House lawmakers, probably on Wednesday.

If the committee agrees on a text, a final vote in both chambers is likely to take place on Thursday, but the outcome of that still seems uncertain in the Lower Chamber, the National Assembly, where Mr Macron’s party needs allies’ votes for a majority.

If the government fears it will not have enough votes in the Lower House, it is still possible for it to push the text through without a parliamentary vote, via a so-called 49:3 procedure.

An additional day of nationwide strikes and protests was planned for Wednesday.

Fewer than expected at Saturday’s marches

According to figures from the Interior Ministry, 368,000 demonstrators marched through various cities on Saturday. The authorities had expected up to one million people to take part. As with the previous protests, Saturday’s events were free of any major scuffles with the police.

Last Tuesday, 1.28 million people took to the streets, the highest turnout since the start of the protest movement, according to government figures.

In a joint statement, the French unions, maintaining a rare show of unity since the protest movement was launched at the end of January, called on the government to organise a “citizens’ consultation” as soon as possible.

The unions plan to keep up the pressure “and to keep on proving that the vast majority of the population remains determined to say no to the proposed Bill”, they said.

Opinion polls show that a majority of voters oppose Mr Macron’s plan, while a slim majority support the strike actions.

Lower power supply due to strikes

“A lot of things can still happen next week,” Ms Marylise Leon, deputy secretary-general of CFDT, France’s largest union, told Franceinfo radio. “Will the text be voted on in the National Assembly? We have to rally. It’s now or never.”

A spokesman for TotalEnergies told Reuters that strikes are continuing in the oil major’s French refineries and depots, while public railway operator SNCF said national and regional services would remain heavily disrupted at the weekend.

In Paris, garbage continues to pile up on the streets, with residents noting a growing presence of rats, according to local media.

National power production in France was reduced by 7.1 gigawatts, or 14 per cent, at nuclear, thermal and hydropower plants on Saturday owing to the strikes, a CGT union spokesman told Reuters.

Maintenance was also blocked at six French nuclear reactors, including Penly 1, the spokesman added. REUTERS