President Emmanuel Macron, apparently short of parliamentary support for his contentious proposal to increase the retirement age by two years, has decided to push the legislation through without a vote in the National Assembly, a decision certain to inflame an already tense confrontation over the measure in France.

The decision prompted raucous protests on Thursday inside the assembly chamber, where Opposition lawmakers sang the French national anthem and banged on their desks, drowning out a speech by the Prime Minister, a Macron ally.

The noisy session came after weeks of protests and strikes against Macron’s proposal that have disrupted public transportation, left garbage piling up and sparked impassioned debate over the future of the country’s cherished social protection system.

Earlier on Thursday — a day after hundreds of thousands of people marched in cities around France to oppose the plan — the upper house of Parliament, the Senate, approved the bill, which increases the age when most workers are able to retire with a government pension to 64, from 62. But in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house, Macron’s party and its allies hold only a slim majority and did not have enough votes to pass the bill.

The move, using the socalled article 49.3 of the Constitution, will ensure the bill raising the retirement age by two years to 64 is adopted, but it shows Macron and his government failed to garner enough of a majority in parliament. Borne was greeted by boos as she arrived at the National Assembly to announce the special procedure. Some brandished placards read: “No to 64 years”.

When the session resumed, Borne took the floor but her speech was largely drowned by boos and chants from Opposition MPs and shouts of “resignation”, in a rare chaotic scene in the French parliament.

Resorting to the measure is likely to further enrage unions, protesters and Left-wing Opposition parties that say the pension overhaul is unfair and unnecessary.

New York Times News Service and Reuters