Aurelia Butler

PARIS (Reuters) -The French Senate on Saturday night adopted President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pension reform plan in the wake of a seventh day of demonstrations that were not as large as authorities had expected.One hundred and ninety-five members of the upper house of the French Parliament voted for the text, whose key measure is raising the retirement age by two years to 64, while 112 voted against.The protests – and rolling strikes that have affected refineries, public transport and garbage collections – aimed to pressure the government to withdraw the pension plan, which it said is essential to ensure the pension system does not run out of money.”After hundreds of hours of discussions, the Senate adopted the pension reform plan. It is a key step to make a reform happen that will guarantee the future of our pension system,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on Twitter.She added she was “totally committed to ensure the text will be definitively adopted in the coming days”.Now that the Senate has adopted the bill, it will be reviewed by a joint committee of lower and upper house lawmakers, probably on Wednesday.If the committee agrees on a text, a final vote in both chambers is likely to take place on Thursday, but the outcome of that still seems uncertain in the lower chamber, the National Assembly, where Macron’s party needs allies’ votes for a majority.If the government fears it won’t have enough votes in the lower house, it is still possible for it to push the text through without a parliamentary vote, via a so-called 49:3 procedure.An additional day of nationwide strikes and protests was planned for Wednesday.FEWER THAN EXPECTED AT SATURDAY’S MARCHESAccording to figures from the interior ministry, 368,000 demonstrators marched through various cities on Saturday. Authorities had expected up to 1 million people to take part. As with the previous protests, Saturday’s events were free of any major scuffles with the police.On Tuesday, 1.28 million people took to the streets, the highest turnout since the start of the protest movement, according to government figures.In a joint statement, the French unions, maintaining a rare show of unity since the protest movement was launched at the end of January, called on the government to organize a “citizens’ consultation” as soon as possible.The unions plan to keep up pressure “and to keep on proving that the vast majority of the population remains determined to say no to the proposed bill,” they said.Opinion polls show a majority of voters oppose Macron’s plan, while a slim majority supports the strike actions.LOWER POWER SUPPLY DUE TO STRIKES”A lot of things can still happen next week,” Marylise Leon, deputy secretary general of the CFDT union, the country’s largest, told Franceinfo radio. “Will the text be voted in the National Assembly? We have to rally. It’s now or never.”A spokesperson for TotalEnergies said that strikes continue in the oil major’s French refineries and depots, while public railway operator SNCF said national and regional services would remain heavily disrupted over the weekend.In Paris, garbage continues to pile up on the streets, with residents seeing a growing presence of rats, according to local media.National power production in France was reduced by 7.1 gigawatts (GW), or 14%, at nuclear, thermal and hydropower plants on Saturday due to the strikes, a CGT union spokesperson told Reuters.Maintenance was also blocked at six French nuclear reactors, including Penly 1, the spokesperson said. More

Talks were scheduled for Saturday to discuss the issues faced by British tech companies affected by the collapse, the ministry said in a statement. The Bank of England on Friday said it was seeking a court order to place SVB UK into an insolvency procedure.”The government recognises that tech sector companies are often not cashflow-positive as they grow, and that they rely on cash on deposits to cover their day to day costs,” the statement said. Advisory firm Rothschild & Co is exploring options for SVB UK as insolvency looms, two people familiar with the discussions told Reuters. More than 250 UK tech firm chief executives signed a letter addressed to Jeremy Hunt, the British chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister), calling for government intervention, a copy seen by Reuters shows.”The recent news about SVB going into insolvency represents an existential threat to the UK tech sector,” the letter said. “This weekend the majority of us as tech founders are running numbers to see if we are potentially technically insolvent.””Most businesses are operating on very fine margins in the current economy and the contagion from the initial insolvencies will be vast and impact the economy far beyond the tech sector,” the letter said.Sky News had reported earlier on Saturday that a British clearing bank, the Bank of London, was considering a rescue bid for the UK arm of SVB.Under insolvency proceedings for banks in Britain, some depositors are eligible for up to 85,000 pounds ($102,000) of compensation for cash held at lenders, or 170,000 pounds for joint accounts.Britain’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is also talking to the affected tech firms. A further statement will be issued after the talks on Saturday.Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at the investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said in an emailed note that there would be aftershocks in the tech sector next week. “Urgent talks regarding potential takeovers will be ongoing, with regulators under pressure to negotiate bailouts to avoid further damaging fallout,” Streeter said.The ministry said Britain’s banking system remained strong and resilient. The issues affecting Silicon Valley Bank were specific to it and did not have implications for other banks operating in the UK, the ministry said. More

The offer – which members still need to vote on – would give Deutsche Post’s 160,000 employees in Germany a one-off payment of 3,000 euros over 15 months and raises monthly wages by 340 euros from April 1, 2024, the company said in a statement.That means wages will rise in total by 11.5% on average, with salaries for workers in lower-paid brackets set to increase by more than 20%.The deal could set a new precedent after unions in other sectors in Europe’s largest economy such as the metal and electrical or chemical and pharmaceutical industries recently agreed wage hikes well below inflation.Some 86% of members of the services sector trade union Verdi had voted on Thursday to reject a previous wage offer prompting a new round of negotiating.Brisk inflation and widespread labour shortages are emboldening unions in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to demand double-digit wage hikes this year.Verdi called earlier on Saturday for strikes on March 13 at the country’s northern airports, including Berlin, which it said would likely cause longer queues for passengers and flight cancellations.German consumer prices rose by 9.3% on the year in February. More