Macron Narrowly Survives No-Confidence Vote

The government of French President Emanuel Macron survived two no-confidence votes Monday, either of which could have brought down the government and its deeply unpopular plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The first vote, tabled by centrist lawmakers in the National Assembly, narrowly failed with 278 MPs in favor, nine short of the 287 needed to succeed, the BBC reports. The second motion, brought by the far-right National Rally party, failed by a much wider margin. The controversial pension reforms, which Macron pushed through without a vote in the National Assembly, using special constitutional powers, will now become law, the AP reports.

After the first vote narrowly failed, leftist lawmakers urged Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, a member of Macron's Renaissance party, to resign. "The government is already dead in the eyes of the French, it doesn't have any legitimacy any more," lawmaker Mathilde Panot said. The proposed change to the retirement age sparked months of strikes and protests. Analysts at Barclays predict that Macron's government will remain in place, though it will be "significantly weakened, while social protests against the reform would likely continue for some weeks, which could negatively affect the French economy," per the Telegraph. (More France stories.)