(MENAFN) France’s Senate has struck down a major clause in the 2026 Social Security Financing Bill that would have paused the contentious pension reform until January 2028.

In a late Tuesday session, senators voted to remove Article 45, which would have frozen the legal retirement age at 62 years and 9 months and halted planned extensions to contribution periods.

A total of 190 senators backed keeping the reform on track, while 108 voted in favor of the suspension, media reported.

Centrist Senator Olivier Henno, who sponsored one of the amendments scrapping the suspension, said he refused to “fuel a normative and financial drift contrary to the spirit of responsibility which must govern the management of our social accounts.”

Independent Senator Emmanuel Capus went further, calling the suspension “certainly the worst political decision of recent decades.” He warned that stopping the reform would echo the highly controversial lowering of the retirement age to 60 in 1981.

The proposed suspension had been introduced as an amendment in the National Assembly, viewed as a political concession from Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to the Socialist Party. It sought to temporarily freeze both the legal retirement age and required contribution periods through Jan. 1, 2028.

President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly stressed that the measure represented only a “delay” rather than a full halt to his signature pension reform.

Under the current plan, the legal retirement age is set to rise to 64 for individuals born in 1968 and later. If delayed, the age increase would affect those born in 1969 instead. The 172-quarter contribution requirement for a full pension would also shift from the 1965 generation to the 1966 cohort.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill formally Wednesday afternoon before it moves to a joint committee of senators and lawmakers, expected to meet the same evening. The committee will attempt to reach a compromise for submission to both chambers before Dec. 12.

However, deep divisions over the pension reform—particularly between Socialists and Republicans—make an agreement unlikely. If the committee cannot reach a deal, the bill will return to the National Assembly, where left-wing parties may have a stronger chance of reinstating the suspension in a second reading.

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