France has opened a waiting compass after almost two weeks of political and social tension over the pension reform.
Attendance at the last demonstration, on Tuesday, was lower than the previous week.
There were incidents, but the general outbreak that some feared did not take place.
While waiting for the Constitutional Court to decide, on April 14, on the future of the reform, the Government and the unions have summoned a meeting for next week, a possible start of the thaw after months without dialogue.
The resolution of the crisis, however, is far away.
The calm after several nights of clashes between protesters and police is fragile.
Throughout France, new demonstrations have been called this Thursday "for the victims of police violence."
Two men aged 32 and 34, who participated in an action against a mega-pool in a rural area on Saturday, are in a coma.
The Justice examines two complaints for "attempted murder."
The parents of one of the two injured, identified as Serge, have also denounced the "obstacles to the arrival of aid".
They accuse the forces of order of preventing the movement of the emergency services to the land where the men were badly injured.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, maintains that the land was at that time a battlefield where a group of violent men attacked the gendarmes, and that it was precisely a doctor from the gendarmerie who came to treat Serge.
The demonstration was not authorized.
The prefecture of the Deux-Sèvres province, where the mega-pool is located, announced the day before that, when searching protesters' cars, it had seized small axes, blades and steel petanque balls.
Darmanin has announced that he will call for the banning of Le Soulèvement de la Terre
(The uprising of the Earth), one of the convening groups.
All this gives an idea that the situation can spill over at any time, starting with the concentrations this Thursday.
But the trade union and political front has entered a brief hiatus.
The next day of national mobilization - the eleventh since the Government presented the pension reform in January and the union protests began - is scheduled for Thursday, April 6.
A week and a day later, the Constitutional Court will announce his decision on two issues that can clarify the confusing panorama and determine the fate of the reform that increases the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
The Constitutional Court, made up of nine members known as
savants
and chaired by former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, must decide, on the one hand, whether to accept the proposal to collect almost five million signatures and organize a referendum that sets the legal retirement age at France in the 62 years.
The other decision concerns the constitutionality of the law, adopted last week in Parliament after a troubled legislative process.
The plaintiffs question that the Government labeled the pension reform as a financial law, a label that allowed speeding up the debates and facilitated the use of the decree.
The Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, has invited the unions to meet her at the beginning of next week at the Matignon mansion, the seat of the government headquarters.
Laurent Berger, general secretary of the moderate CFDT union, the first in France, has announced that he will attend.
His objective is to convince Borne and Macron to leave the reform on hold for a few months in order to open negotiations and calm things down in the country.
It is an option that some of Macron's allies defend as well.
But the Government's position is that the reform must be allowed to follow its "democratic path" and wait for the decision of the Constitutional Court.
If he approves the law, or its essential parts, Macron has announced that he will promulgate it so that it enters into force before the end of the year.
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