PARIS, Oct. 23: The French Senate approved an unpopular pension reform on Friday in a victory for the President, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, although unions opposed to raising the retirement age have vowed to keep fighting it.
Senators voted 177 in favour and 153 against the Bill after the Conservative government used a special measure to speed up the debate in the Upper House, having had to send in police to break up long-running blockades of fuel depots.
“It is not by hanging on symbols of the past that we will remain a great nation,” Mr Eric Woerth, the labour minister in charge of pushing the reform, said in a speech to the Senate shortly before the vote.
Signalling their determination to keep fighting the Bill, France’s six main unions have called for two more days of protest action on October 28 and November 6. “The protests are not stopping, we just have different views on how to proceed,” Mr Jean-Claude Mailly, head of the Force Ouvriere union told RMC radio.