The French Senate, thanks to the right-wing majority in the upper house, has shown itself in favor of delaying the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years, the main point of the pension reform of President Emmanuel Macron. After midnight, 201 senators spoke in favor of which is already the well-known article 7 of the bill that increases by two years the age at which the French will have to wait to be able to assert their rights to retirement, while 115 spoke out against and 29 abstained.

The vote took place at the end of a parliamentary scuffle lasting fifteen hours on that article, with the left having submitted hundreds of amendments to obstruct the debate and the right resorting to an exceptional device that allows them to be bypassed.

The Labor Minister, Olivier Dussopt, he was satisfied but prudentaware that this partial progress for his project was based on support from the right that will be essential for him to move forward in the conciliation phase between the two parliamentary chambers.

Dussopt considered that it was “a vote of responsibility by the Senate, which has opted to follow the Government”, and expressed his wish that all the articles can be discussed and adopted between now and the deadline for processing in the Senate, midnight on Sunday.

But the big winner of the night was the head of the parliamentary group of the classic right party The Republicans, Bruno Retailleau, whose senators were the fundamental support of article 7: 127 spoke in favor and only 2 against.

Beyond this vote and the parliamentary process, which could end next week, The big stumbling block for Macron are the massive protests in the street organized by all the unions gathered in a union quite unheard of in France.

Last Tuesday, the sixth day of mobilizations was the largest since the start of the movement in January by the number of demonstrators: 1.28 million, according to the Ministry of the Interior, 3.5 million, according to the CGT.

It is true that the plants did not paralyze the country, as they had announced, but they have called two new days of actionon Saturday the 11th and Wednesday the 15th of March and they asked that Macron urgently receive them, whom they are demanding the withdrawal of his pension reform project.

Meanwhile, strikes continue in certain sectors, in particular in public transport and energy. In transport, both today and tomorrow, 20% of flights will be canceled at Charles de Gaulle and 30% at Orly, the second airport in Paris, as well as at Beauvais, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse.