The French Senate Friday defy tens of thousands of protesters and approved its version of a controversial pension reform measure with a vote of 177-153, bringing the package one step closer to implementation.
A conference committee of seven senators and seven members of parliament will meet early next week to reconcile the differences between the Senate and National Assembly bills. Each house will then vote for or against the bill proposed by the conference committee. A final vote on the reform is expected early Tuesday or Wednesday in both the Senate and National Assembly, according to a spokesman in the Senate. As is the custom in the Senate, senators voted Friday by placing plastic credit-card sized tokens into one of three different urns indicating a vote for, against or in abstention. The cards were then poured out into a scale and the vote was calculated by the total weight of tokens in each urn. Labor Minister Eric Woerth said Thursday that the retirement reform has been the single most debated bill in terms of the number of hours the Senate has spent examining it since the creation of the fifth republic in 1958. Protesters have scuffled with police and blockaded oil refineries and terminals for days as tensions flared over the proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 -- a measure that the government says is necessary to save money.
"It was our job to do this reform," Woerth said after the Senate vote. "It`s to assure that our children can have the same pension benefits that we do." French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has said the country cannot continue to pay its debts -- to retirees and others -- by borrowing at current levels. The government`s announced goal is to cut the deficit from 8 percent to 6 percent of gross domestic product by next year, an ambitious goal.
The lower house of parliament passed the pension reform bill in September, by a vote of 329 to 233. More than a million people have turned out nationwide to protest the proposal. Six major French unions have called for further nationwide demonstrations on October 28 and November 6, saying that protests so far show the people are ready to dig in for the long haul. The country has faced fuel shortages because workers are on strike at all 12 of the nation`s refineries, and protesters are blocking 14 of the country`s 219 oil terminals.
A conference committee of seven senators and seven members of parliament will meet early next week to reconcile the differences between the Senate and National Assembly bills. Each house will then vote for or against the bill proposed by the conference committee. A final vote on the reform is expected early Tuesday or Wednesday in both the Senate and National Assembly, according to a spokesman in the Senate. As is the custom in the Senate, senators voted Friday by placing plastic credit-card sized tokens into one of three different urns indicating a vote for, against or in abstention. The cards were then poured out into a scale and the vote was calculated by the total weight of tokens in each urn. Labor Minister Eric Woerth said Thursday that the retirement reform has been the single most debated bill in terms of the number of hours the Senate has spent examining it since the creation of the fifth republic in 1958. Protesters have scuffled with police and blockaded oil refineries and terminals for days as tensions flared over the proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 -- a measure that the government says is necessary to save money.
"It was our job to do this reform," Woerth said after the Senate vote. "It`s to assure that our children can have the same pension benefits that we do." French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has said the country cannot continue to pay its debts -- to retirees and others -- by borrowing at current levels. The government`s announced goal is to cut the deficit from 8 percent to 6 percent of gross domestic product by next year, an ambitious goal.
The lower house of parliament passed the pension reform bill in September, by a vote of 329 to 233. More than a million people have turned out nationwide to protest the proposal. Six major French unions have called for further nationwide demonstrations on October 28 and November 6, saying that protests so far show the people are ready to dig in for the long haul. The country has faced fuel shortages because workers are on strike at all 12 of the nation`s refineries, and protesters are blocking 14 of the country`s 219 oil terminals.
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