On Friday, after weeks of uncertainty, the French president Emmanuel Macron invoked article 49.3 of the French Constitution to pass his contentious and unpopular retirement reform into law. The reform, which raises the age of retirement from 62 to 64, will now become law unless at least one of two long-shot censure motions is approved by a majority of MPs today.
Macron’s decision to bypass parliament has caused outrage and sparked significant protests. French cities were shaken by riots over the weekend. MPs offices have been ransacked and parliamentarians threatened with violence if they do not vote to censure the government. Rubbish is piling up in the streets of Paris as a result of sanitation worker strikes. “It stinks,” my dad informed me when he called me from Paris yesterday.
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