French pension changes head for final parliamentary votes on Thursday

French President Emmanuel Macron's much-disputed plan to raise the retirement age by two years to 64 moved forward on Wednesday as a select group of lawmakers from both houses of parliament agreed a compromise text, despite nationwide protests. But approval of the deeply unpopular bill - which has faced huge street protests and repeated job walkouts - by the full parliament on Thursday is still not a done deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron's much-disputed plan to raise the retirement age by two years to 64 moved forward on Wednesday as a select group of lawmakers from both houses of parliament agreed a compromise text, despite nationwide protests.

But approval of the deeply unpopular bill - which has faced huge street protests and repeated job walkouts - by the full parliament on Thursday is still not a done deal. Ruling party officials have acknowledged the numbers were tight and lawmakers from the conservative Les Republicains (LR) and centrist groups said they were being courted by ministers hoping to convince them to vote the changes through.

It should not be too hard to get the Senate's approval, as it is dominated by LR, but things will be trickier in the National Assembly. If too tight for comfort, the government may resort to a procedure known as "49:3", which would allow it to push the text through without a vote. That would ensure the text was adopted but would risk anger on the streets.

Opinion polls show a vast majority of voters oppose the changes, and unions, and protesters, have warned they will continue their mobilisation even if the bill gets final approval in votes in both houses of parliament. "We will continue the fight no matter what," said Philippe Martinez, the head of the hardline CGT union, when asked if they would stop protests and walkouts if the bill was voted through.

"If they vote for this reform, I don't think things will go down well, because we see that blue-collar workers, communities of workers have gone against this reform. People have had enough," Yvonnick Dauve, a welder and unionist in Ancenis-Saint-Gereon, said at a march in western France. Macron and his government say the changes to the pension system, one of the most generous among industrialised nations, are necessary to keep the pension budget in the black. At stake for the president are not just financial gains, however, but also his reformist credentials.