France is braced for another round of mass strikes and protests this weekend, the second in a week and the seventh since January, as lawmakers continue to debate plans to overhaul the country's pensions system. The upper house of parliament has until Sunday night to finish debating the contested legislation.
Marches are planned in Paris and other cities on Saturday, four days after more than a million people turned out for the last nationwide rallies.
Strikes have been ongoing in certain sectors all week, as various unions escalate to rolling stoppages.
Workers in the energy sector, transport workers and Paris waste collectors have maintained strikes for several days in a row, though disruption had eased by Friday.
Unions are aiming to keep up pressure on the French Senate, which has until midnight on Sunday to accept or revise the legislation.
Sped-up vote in Senate
Senators have already voted in favour of one of the most controversial proposals: to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
But with more than 1,000 amendments still to be discussed, on Friday the government invoked a clause in the constitution that will allow senators to consider only amendments approved by the government.
It also obliges them hold a single vote on the legislation as a whole rather than deciding on each article separately.
The move was fiercely denounced by opponents of the reform. But the government insisted that it was just trying to keep to schedule, after the lower house of parliament ran out of time for its own votes on the legislation amid a heated debate over thousands of amendments.
After the Senate concludes its discussions, both houses will have to take a definitive vote on the reform later this month.
Flights, trains cancelled
As Sunday's deadline approaches, unions have promised disruption throughout the weekend, especially in the transport sector.
With air traffic controllers planning more walk-outs, France's aviation authority has instructed airlines to cancel at least 20 percent of flights on Saturday at Paris-Orly, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes and Bordeaux airports.
The cancellations will continue on Sunday at Paris-Orly, Marseille and Toulouse.
Rail operator SNCF said that train services would remain reduced, with only around a third of trains running. International train services are also affected, including the Eurostar.
Workers at in the energy sector – who are represented by the CGT union, considered one of the most hard-line – have been blockading fuel refineries and shipping sites since Monday in a bid to disrupt supplies at petrol stations.
So far the impact of their action has been felt mainly in the west of France, where more than 18 percent of service stations were experiencing shortages on Friday compared to an average of around 3 percent nationwide.
In Paris, the Metro was running more or less normally by Friday, though some RER regional express lines were operating on a reduced schedule. The situation is expected to remain similar throughout the weekend.
Some 3,700 tonnes of uncollected rubbish had piled up in the capital by Thursday, according to the city council, as waste collectors maintained a rolling strike.
Next steps
Cross-sector unions have already announced that they will strike again on 15 March.
The movement has been demanding since Tuesday's demos to discuss the reforms directly with President Emmanuel Macron, but without success.
In a letter addressed to unions this week and obtained by the TF1/LCI news channel, Macron insisted he remained open to dialogue, though without proposing a meeting.
DOCUMENT TF1/LCI La lettre du Président de la république à l’intersyndicale . Pas de rencontre proposée cc @TF1Info pic.twitter.com/STS1V12Wmh
— Marie Chantrait (@mchantrait) March 10, 2023
After the Senate vote, the pensions bill will go to a joint committee, where seven senators and seven MPs will be responsible for establishing a final version.
The two houses of France's parliament, the Senate and the National Assembly, are then due to vote on it by 26 March at the latest.
Macron's government is counting on the measures passing without having to resort to Article 49.3, the part of the French constitution that that allows the executive to force laws through parliament without a vote.
The government, which lost its absolute majority in parliamentary elections last year, has already used the mechanism to pass a contested budget bill.
