Anti-pension reform campaigners were on Thursday considering their next step after France's Constitutional Council rejected a second attempt to organise a referendum on the legal retirement age.
The nine-member body, which adjudicates on constitutional issues, threw out the first proposal on 14 April.
On Wednesday night it rebuffed the latest attempt from more than 250 mainly left wing deputies that want to stop President Emmanuel Macron increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64
The council ruled that the referendum of shared initiative could not be used to derail the policy.
Disappointment
Arthur Delaporte, one of the deputies who lodged the proposal, told the French newspaper Le Monde: "This decision is a disappointment even if we knew that it might not go our way."
"It is also an alert," he added. "This setback poses questions that are about democracy and our institutions.
"Parliament was not able to vote on the pension reform and now the constitutional council says that the referendum of shared initiative is not applicable for an issue as serious as the age of retirement."
The bloc of deputies got their second chance with the constitutional council because the law to raise the retirement age to 64 had not yet been put into force.
Their new proposal included more financial details about how to maintain the retirement age at 62.
Protest
As the council was delivering its verdict, protesters gathered at the Place du Louvre near the council's chambers in central Paris.
In Bordeaux, south-western France, the CGT union organised a rally in front of the court buildings. Demonstrations were organised in Brest and Quimper in north-western France as well as Nimes and Nice in the south.
Unions and activists used the traditional 1 May rallies to voice their opposition to Macron's plans.
The French inter-union group also called for a new day of mobilisation against the pension reform on 6 June, two days before the presentation of a bill to repeal the text in the National Assembly.
Change
But the protests are unlikely to persuade Macron to change course.
The constitutional council cleared the path for his showpiece reform on 14 April.
It said the government's deployment of Article 49.3 – bypassing a vote in the Assemblée nationale – had not been unconstitutional.
"The combined use of the procedures implemented was unusual but did not have the effect of rendering the legislative procedure contrary to the constitution," said the council.
The council - established in October 1958 with a brief to review the constitutionality of laws – was called on after the stormy passage of Macron's policy through the Assemblée nationale.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne was forced to use Article 49.3 to bulldoze the law through the lower house of parliament.
Borne blamed MPs in the Les Républicains (LR) party for the last-minute decision to avoid a vote and unleash what is considered in French political circles as the nuclear option.
Less than an hour after the council's decision, labour unions urged Macron not to put the law into effect despite having championed the measure during his first period in office and placing it at the heart of his programme for his second and final term which began last May.
But Macron enacted the law immediately sparking more fury among opponents.
