French Senate blocks planned suspension of pension reform

ISTANBUL

France’s Senate has removed a key provision of the 2026 Social Security Financing Bill that would have suspended the controversial pension reform until January 2028.

During a public session late Tuesday, senators voted to delete Article 45, which froze the legal retirement age at 62 years and 9 months and halted the planned extension of contribution periods.

A total of 190 senators supported maintaining the reform, while 108 voted to uphold the suspension, BFM TV reported.

Centrist Senator Olivier Henno, who sponsored one of the amendments scrapping the suspension, said he refused to “fuel a normative and financial drift contrary to the spirit of responsibility which must govern the management of our social accounts.”

Independent Senator Emmanuel Capus went further, describing the suspension as “certainly the worst political decision of recent decades.” He argued that halting the reform would echo the controversial lowering of the retirement age to 60 in 1981.

The proposed suspension was originally introduced by amendment in the National Assembly as a political gesture from Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to the Socialist Party, granting a temporary freeze on both the legal retirement age and required contribution periods through Jan. 1, 2028.

President Emmanuel Macron, however, had repeatedly insisted the measure was only a “delay” rather than a halt to his flagship reform.

Under the current framework, the legal retirement age is scheduled to reach 64 for people born in 1968 and later. With the delay, that threshold would shift by one year and apply to those born in 1969. Contribution requirements of 172 quarters for a full pension would also be pushed from the 1965 generation to the 1966 cohort.

The Senate will formally vote on the bill on Wednesday afternoon before the bill moves to a joint committee of senators and lawmakers, expected to meet the same evening.

The group will attempt to reach a compromise that could then be submitted to both chambers before Dec. 12.

However, disagreements over the pension reform -- particularly between Socialists and Republicans -- make a deal unlikely.

If the committee fails, the bill will return to the National Assembly, where left-wing parties stand a better chance of reinstating the suspension in a second reading.