France’s senate has voted to approve a deeply unpopular reform to pensions, hours after demonstrators took to the streets again to oppose the cornerstone policy of Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential term.

It means the government's package to raise the pension age from 62 to 64 is another step towards becoming law.

 Gérard Larcher, the French Senate president, announced: "We have reached the end of this very dense debate in which everyone has spoken. Since Thursday, March 2, we have sat continuously for ten days and almost as many nights for a total of more than 100 hours of debate. We have registered a record number of amendments and sub-amendments: 8,900 in total."

French Senators had already voted on Thursday in favour of a decisive article of the bill. 

The text must now be agreed upon during a joint committee on Wednesday 15 March. If deputies and senators approve the text, it will have to be validated on Thursday 16 first in the Senate and then in the National Assembly.

Tensions flared in the evening, with Paris police saying they had made 32 arrests after some protesters threw objects at security forces, with rubbish bins burned and windows broken.

This week, Macron twice turned down urgent calls by unions to meet with him in a last-ditch attempt to get him to change his mind.

“When there are millions of people in the streets, when there are strikes and all we get from the other side is silence, people wonder: What more do we need to do to be heard?” he said, calling for a referendum on the pensions reform.

The interior ministry said 368,000 people showed up nationwide for protests – less than half of the 800,000 to one million that police had predicted.

In Paris, 48,000 people took part in rallies, compared with police forecasts of about 100,000.