The Constitutional Council is set to decide on whether to approve French pension reforms that have sparked nationwide protests over the past three months.

This is the reforms’ final hurdle before French President, Emmanual Macron, can sign them into law.

The proposals make several changes to the pension system in France, most notably and controversially the gradual increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The Constitutional Council is the highest constitutional authority in France and will decide on whether the reforms are constitutional.

It will make two decisions today (14 April), one on whether to approve the pension reform bill and another on requests from opposition MPs to conduct a referendum on an alternative law to limit the retirement age to 62.

The nine-member council is led my former Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, and could decide to partially back the bill, whereby it would remove some aspects of the law that it feels are inappropriate.

However, it is reportedly likely that it will back the primary aspects of the bill, including the raising of the retirement age.

The pension reforms have faced opposition both in the streets and in parliament, with Macron invoking Article 49:3 to push through his government’s pension reforms, bypassing the National Assembly, in March.

Macron has previously described the reforms as essential to make the nation’s pension system more affordable, with the system forecast to run at a deficit in its current state.

The proposed pension age reform process is scheduled to start in September, reaching 63 years and three months by 2027 and hitting the target age of 64 in 2030.

Alongside the raising of the retirement age, several other proposals were presented as part of the reforms.

The amount of time working needed to receive a full pension will rise from 42 years to 43 and a guaranteed minimum pension income will be introduced.

This income level will be set at no less than 85 per cent of minimum wage for new retirees.

Public sector workers in mentally or physically demanding jobs will keep the right to retire earlier than the wider workforce, but their retirement age will rise at the same rate.

The government also announced that differing retirement ages and pension benefits for certain workforces, such as rail workers, would end.

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