IN NORMAL TIMES a ruling by the French Constitutional Council on a piece of legislation is a formality. But France is in a state of heightened political tension, after months of protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the legal minimum pension age from 62 years to 64. The decision by the council on April 14th to validate this legislation will come as a huge relief to the president, who is still reeling from the diplomatic fallout from ill-judged remarks he made after his recent trip to China. But it is unlikely to put an immediate end to the protests, or to the domestic political crisis. Marine Le Pen, leader of the hard-right National Rally, described the writing into law of a “brutal and unfair” reform as the “definitive rupture between the French people and Emmanuel Macron”.

It was a measure of the tense mood in France that, before the ruling, riot police set up a protective shield in front of the building in Paris that houses the Constitutional Council, formerly a palace belonging to French monarchs. Protests nearby were banned. Opponents had seen the council’s decision as the last chance to overturn the legislation, which Mr Macron’s government pushed through parliament in March using a procedure that avoided the need for a direct parliamentary vote. Protesters, opposition leaders and unionists have used strikes and marches to demand its retraction since January.

Instead, the nine-member council ruled that the procedure used by the government could not be deemed unconstitutional. It validated the key provision that raises the retirement age while rejecting six less important measures, such as the introduction of a compulsory index to monitor firms’ employment rate of older workers. The new rules will now enter the statute books, and take effect in 2030.

This decision, however, will enrage those who argue that it has been imposed against the will of both parliament and the French people, not least because the council also rejected an initiative by opposition legislators to launch a petition to hold a referendum on keeping the pension age at 62. Despite the piles of stinking rubbish in Paris, the cancelled trains and planes and crowded Metro carriages, a majority of the French still disapprove of Mr Macron’s plans. Before the council’s decision one poll found that 52% of the French would back more protests even if the reform were validated. So the strikes and marches look likely to continue. Sophie Binet, the newly elected leader of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), a union with links to the Communist Party, urged Mr Macron not to write the reform into law and called for a massive turnout of protesters on May 1st, a day of traditional labour marches.

Mr Macron had invited union leaders to his office on April 18th for talks. Although some of them have been demanding this since the start of the year, shortly after the ruling they rejected the invitation. It is unclear what there was to discuss. The president would like to move the conversation on to other measures that could help bring about full employment in France, one of his re-election campaign pledges. He hopes to bring down the unemployment rate from 7% today to about 5%, a level not seen since 1979. But union leaders are in no mood to co-operate.

For Mr Macron, who had to put his minority government’s survival on the line after forcing the legislation through parliament and thereby triggering two confidence votes, the coming days will be a crucial test of his management of a divided country. Before the ruling, during a visit to the works to rebuild Notre Dame cathedral, the president hinted at his resolve: “Stay the course, that’s my motto,” he said.

Legally, Mr Macron has achieved this, bringing about an important, if modest, reform. Yet the president’s challenge is less his ability to withstand protests than whether he can convince the French that he can govern in a less top-down and heavy-handed manner, or even that he wants to do so. The pension-reform drama has shown that Mr Macron has political steel. But if he is to carry out further reform he needs not just to say that he will govern differently, but to find a way to do so credibly and respectfully. ■