The top court in France will rule on Friday on the government's controversial proposed legislation to reform the country's pension system.

This will be the final major step for the contentious bill to be cleared before the president can sign it into law.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne sent the bill to the council on March 21, and since then the members of the council have been scrutinizing the constitutionality of the text.

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The headline policy change the government wants to enact is to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Opponents of the legislation, who have been holding mass street protests on a regular basis since mid January, hope that the court will opt to scrap the bill.

The latest day of mass social action took place on Thursday across France, with hundreds of thousands of people joining demonstrations and marches as the unions try to keep up the pressure on the government.

The unions want ministers to drop what they describe as 'unfair and unjust' proposed legislation but the government argues that the changes are essential to make France's pension system financially sustainable in the future. 

The president has offered to meet union leaders after the decision by the court that is due on Friday.

On Thursday, the leader of the CGT union, Sophie Binet, said of the possible talks with Emmanuel Macron: "If it is to discuss pension reform, then with pleasure, but if it's not [about pension reform] then we have other things to get on with."

The meeting of the 'Elders'

There are nine members of the French Constitutional Council, who are known as the 'Sages' or the 'Elders', and they meet in the opulent setting of the Palais Royal, opposite the Louvre Museum in central Paris.

Their final overall decision on how much of a bill is constitutional is made public, but the content of their debates or internal votes remain secret.

The Council has three options: total approval, partial approval, or total censure.

If the court fully approves the bill, then the text in its entirety can be signed into law by the president.

But if the Council chooses to approve only parts of the legislation, then the president can either sign into law the validated sections of the bill, or he can request a second examination of the text by the members of the Council.

Finally, if the members of the Council choose the 'total censure' option, then the bill in its current form is annulled and the government would have to draw up new legislation and would start the whole parliamentary process again.

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