Prime Minister of France seeks to negotiate with opposition and unions in the face of pension crisis

French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne is due to meet with opposition leaders and unions in the hope of ending weeks of protests against a new pension law, her office said on Sunday.

Demonstrations against the pension reform, which will raise the retirement age by two years, turned violent after the government pushed through the legislation this month without a final parliamentary vote.

President Emmanuel Macron has ruled out repealing or delaying the law, tasking his prime minister with finding new support in Parliament after the government failed to get enough votes to pass it.

Borne will meet political party leaders and also aims to resume dialogue with unions on labor issues, his office said, without mentioning the pension bill.

The prime minister said in an interview with AFP that meetings with opposition and union leaders would take place in the week beginning April 3.

He also vowed to never again use constitutional powers to pass laws without putting them to a vote, except in the case of budget bills, according to AFP.

It is unclear whether the government’s attempt to stem the pension crisis will calm a majority of public opinion hostile to the reform and protesters exasperated by the adoption of the legislation without a final vote.

The unions have scheduled for Tuesday a tenth day of protests across the country against the pension law, after the previous one, on Thursday, produced the most violent clashes to date with the police.

The head of the CFDT union, Laurent Berger, last week proposed to Macron to pause the law for six months to seek a possible compromise.

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