What’s happened?
Emmanuel Macron has been trying to raise France’s retirement age from 62 to 64. The bill was approved in the Senate, but his minority government failed to secure a majority for the change in the National Assembly, the lower house. On 16 March prime minister Elisabeth Borne announced that the reform would instead be forced onto the statute book using article 49.3, a controversial constitutional provision that allows the government to pass laws without a parliamentary vote. The move has provoked a wave of strikes, protests and riots. The situation became so unstable that the authorities had to