PARIS police said today that 234 people were arrested overnight in the capital, mostly for setting fire to rubbish in the streets after parliament failed to bring the government down for raising the retirement age.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government pushed the deeply unpopular Bill through without a vote in the National Assembly last week, causing widespread protests and a narrowly defeated no-confidence vote.

This reflects the emerging twin-track strategy being adopted by opponents of the pensions proposals.

There is a divergence between critics of the government’s plans over whether to prioritise securing a referendum on raising the pension age to 64 or street and industrial action to force a retreat, but both are being organised.

Two no-confidence motions against the government in the National Assembly were both rejected on Monday evening. 

The first no-confidence motion, proposed by a small centrist group with support across the left, narrowly missed approval, garnering 278 of the 287 votes needed to pass. 

The second motion, brought by the far-right National Rally, won just 94 votes in the chamber.

But parliamentarians are now pushing for a national referendum on the issue which, according to deputy and Communist Party general secretary Fabien Roussel, will put the proposal on hold.

He said that the “shared initiative referendum” had been registered and so the president “must now suspend this reform” until the process had been completed.

Shared initiative referendums need the support of one-tenth of registered voters within nine months before a vote can be held.

The Bill also faces a review by the constitutional council, which is able to decide whether the measure falls in line with the constitution.

In Paris, some groups took to the streets to set fire to piles of trash that have formed due to a strike by refuse collectors in the capital that is in its 16th day.

Paris police prefect Laurent Nunez said that violent incidents were caused by groups of up to 300 people quickly moving through the capital.

Mr Macron held a series of political meetings today with the prime minister, parliament leaders and lawmakers from his centrist alliance.

The French president, who made the pension plan a centrepiece of his second term, is to speak on Wednesday on national television, a first since the decision to force the Bill through parliament. 

French unions have called for another day of strikes and protests on March 23 to demand that the government simply withdraw the Bill.