The Constitutional Council endorses the delay of the retirement age in France

The magistrates only correct minor issues, in a political victory for Macron and his government

The Constitutional Council of France has supported this Friday the main pillars of the constitutional reform promoted by the Government, including the delay to 64 years of the retirement age, and has rejected an initiative of the opposition to try to force a referendum.

The magistrates have knocked down six provisions included in the reform, including the one known as 'senior index', a system with which it was proposed to encourage the hiring of older people, but they have considered the most controversial aspects of the text constitutional, which anticipates new mobilizations in the streets.

France experienced on Thursday the twelfth day of protests and strikes against this reform, in which hundreds of thousands of people once again took to the streets of the main cities. The mobilizations go back to January and the unions had already warned that they will continue with them if there are no changes in some of the pillars of the law, such as the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.

The Élysée has summoned the unions for next Tuesday, for a meeting with Macron that they want to hold regardless of the decision adopted by the Constitutional Council. There was already a first meeting with the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, which ended without progress.

Former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from La Francia Insumisa (LFI), has regretted the opinion of the Council, which he considers "more concerned with the needs of the presidential monarchy than with those of the sovereign people." "The fight continues", he has proclaimed himself.

For her part, the far-right Marine Le Pen has warned that, although the "institutional sequence" may have been shelved, she considers that "the political fate" of the reform is not yet closed, since "the people have the last word". It "is up to him to prepare the alternation" that will be able to review "this useless and unfair reform."

Macron has not yet promulgated the law, since from the outset he promised that he would wait for the decision of the Constitutional Council, but from the Élysée they had already pointed out that, once the go-ahead was obtained in the judicial field, he would stamp his signature "on the next few days", according to sources quoted by the BFMTV network.