The Government of France has resorted to a constitutional instrument that avoids submitting to a vote in the National Assembly gala the pension reform, after verifying that he lacks a sufficient majority to carry out one of the star projects of the president, Emmanuel Macron.

Macron, who has maintained contacts throughout the day with different political actors, has urgently met the Council of Ministers so that it endorses the use of article 49.3 of the Constitution, by virtue of which the project will go ahead regardless of their actual level of support.

Already before the Assembly, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, has confirmed the invocation of said article, in a tense beginning of the plenary loaded with reproaches and with display of banners included. “If everyone voted conscientiously and in line with their past positions, we would not be here this afternoon,” she criticized.

49.3 opens the door for the opposition to put on the table motions of no confidence against the Government, something that Borne has already taken for granted, without a doubt”.

In fact, it has already happened on several occasions during this legislature, with motions in which the leftist La Francia Insumisa (LFI) and the far-right Agrupación Nacional have even added votes. Both blocks have confirmed that they will resubmit their motionsalthough the opposition would need new allies to overthrow the Executive.

The far-right Marine Le Pen has announced that “obviously” will activate a vote against the Government, since it considers that it is acting against the position of the majority of the parties that make up Parliament and, by extension, against the interests of “a majority of French people”.

Before the vote in the National Assembly, the Senate supported the reform promoted by Macron this Thursday morning, with 193 votes in favor and 114 against. Borne has tried to show during his evening speech that It is no longer a project of the Executive but of Parliament as a whole.

On Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of people they took to the streets again of the main cities of France, for the eighth time, to question a reform that raises, among other issues, raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 and extending the contribution period necessary to obtain the maximum pension.