Riots in France

I believe Europe faces the necessity of many changes in these areas.

The only ones who are likely to suffer are the ones who aren't accountable for their work--and the union bosses.

Everyone else, including the society as a whole, should prosper. It's like pruning a leggy plant.

But you, Walter, are an unreconstructed Westphalian Social Democrat.

Chirac's party hints at new concessions on job law

Mon Apr 3, 2006 8:10 PM BST

PARIS (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac's ruling conservatives courted unions and students on Monday with hints of fresh concessions in a disputed youth job law, on the eve of new national strikes and protests.

Officials from the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) said they wanted speedy talks "without taboos" with opponents of the new CPE work contract for the young, widely interpreted as a signal the party is ready to make major changes to the law.

"We want an open dialogue with no taboos and no prejudices," UMP spokesman Luc Chatel told a news conference.

"We need to get out of this crisis as soon as possible. We are holding out our hand and want to renew dialogue."

Tuesday's demonstrations and strikes will be keenly watched for signs that the sometimes violent unrest of the last two months has peaked following March 28's nationwide day of action, which unions say was joined by three million demonstrators.

Aimed at tackling high youth unemployment, the CPE is intended to encourage employers to hire by allowing them to summarily fire employees under 26 within a given period. Critics say it will merely increase job insecurity.

Chirac said on Friday he would sign the contract into law, but effectively ordered its suspension pending parliamentary amendments to cut its maximum term to one year from two and to give employees the right to know why they are being fired.

His move lessened the risk that Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the contract's champion and thought to be Chirac's favoured successor as president, would resign. But it could leave Villepin weakened as UMP leaders now seek a solution.

One potential winner is UMP party chief Nicolas Sarkozy, who also harbours ambitions to lead the right in 2007 presidential elections and who may emerge as mediator of a possible solution.

"VIRTUAL PRIME MINISTER"

Patrick Devedjian, a key Sarkozy aide, said the party could go beyond Chirac's concessions and make bosses give written rather than verbal reasons for dismissal -- a clause that would make it harder to sack workers under French labour law.

"Why not?" Devedjian told Les Echos daily. "There's no point in getting hung up about it. It's a subject of debate with the social partners. We are ready for a thorough dialogue."

Critics said it was clear that Sarkozy was now in control.

"From now on, we have a virtual prime minister and a real one. They've kept Dominique de Villepin in his post but stripped him of all scope for doing anything," opposition Socialist Party spokesman Julien Dray told reporters.

Chirac's office sought to defuse such talk, saying the president hoped new proposals on the CPE would be the result of an accord between the leaders of the UMP party in the upper and lower houses of parliament and Villepin.

But Sarkozy remained in the limelight. Bruno Julliard, president of the UNEF students' union, said on French radio Sarkozy had told him in a weekend phone call that suspension of the CPE was one of a number of topics now up for debate.

"UNEF refuses to discuss adjustments to the CPE. If we've refused the CPE, it's not to have a CPE-2 or a CPE-3," he later said in a statement.

Business group Medef has told firms to avoid the CPE contract for now, given the uncertainty over its future.

Former conservative prime minister Edouard Balladur, who ditched an earlier attempt at a youth job contract in 1994 after street protests, said Chirac's move on Friday had effectively killed the CPE.

"It's gone, dead, everyone knows it -- one because it's not being applied and two because it's been decided to overhaul it," he told Europe 1 radio.

Paris: Only 24, but student may decide jobs crisis

By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 04 April 2006

The key to the settlement of France's youth employment crisis now lies largely in the hands of a 24-year-old law student.

More strikes and protests are scheduled today despite President Jacques Chirac all but dumping the controversial law which would make it easier to hire and fire young people.

A radical and criminal fringe - far-left activists, anarchists and youth gangs from poor suburbs - is expected again to seek violent confrontation with riot police when a large march ends in Paris tonight.

But there are signs that the government and moderate trades union and student leaders are preparing to negotiate an end to the four-week-old crisis. If so, the future of France may lie with Bruno Julliard, a young man largely unknown a month ago but now tipped for a glittering, political career on the French left.

M. Julliard, 24, president of the largest French student group, the Union Nationale des Etudiants de France, has been a key figure in the escalation of the initially muddled opposition to the youth contract into a full-blown national crisis. His judgement on when students have won sufficient concessions will be pivotal.

M. Julliard, a graduate law student from Lyons, was phoned at the weekend by Nicolas Sarkozy, the number two in the centre-right French government and a likely candidate for the presidency next year.

In a clear sign that President Chirac and the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, are ready to throw in the towel, M. Sarkozy - their hated rival - has been placed in charge of negotiations with students and trades unions. M. Sarkozy, theInterior Minister and president of the main centre-right party, the UMP, has made clear he is prepared to abandon, not just amend, the hated Contrat Première Embauche (CPE).
In a nationwide television address on Friday, M. Chirac said he would sign the new law but immediately place it in abeyance. He ordered the government to prepare a new law, changing the two most controversial aspects of the CPE. A two-year "trial period" for recruits under 26 would be reduced to one year, during which time employers would no longer be able to fire young people without explanation.

Trades union and student leaders, including M. Julliard, initially dismissed M. Chirac's concessions as "bizarre" and inadequate. In the past two days they have switched tactics, offering to help frame a different employment law. M. Julliard said such discussions were "very probable".

Daniel Cohn-Bendit will be forever the face of the French student revolt of May 1968. Bruno Julliard will probably go down as the face of the "events of March 2006".

Critics say M. Julliard is a pure product of the centre- left, mainstream, "statist" establishment in France. He is the son of a Socialist mayor and the stepson of a Communist-leaning senior civil servant. He is accused by extremists of being a "bourgeois careerist" and by moderates of being a stooge for the anti-market left wing of the main French opposition party, the Parti Socialiste.

The differences between M. Julliard and M. Cohn-Bendit sum up the differences between the two "revolts". Cohn-Bendit, was a classic outsider, who wanted to change everything, an impish, ill-dressed, anarchic figure with a shock of red hair and a funny and provocative turn of phrase.

Bruno Julliard is smartly dressed, and talks the language of mainstream politics. He is fighting a defensive battle to save France's strong, employment protections for the new generation.

Noisy demonstrations in France as jobs law dies a quiet death

By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 05 April 2006
Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of French cities again yesterday to demand the public strangling of a youth jobs law which has already been sentenced to a quiet death.

A large, noisy and mostly peaceful march through eastern Paris had something of the atmosphere of a victory parade. Union and student leaders claimed that, across the country, more than 3,000,000 demonstrated against the "easy hire-easy fire" job law for the young - matching last week's protest numbers.

As the march ended last night, once again there were violent incidents involving fringe groups. About 1,000 anarchists and youths from deprived suburbs hurled lumps of concrete at the riot police. The police responded with tear gas. At least one photographer and a demonstrator were injured.

Earlier, an anarchist group waving red and black flags broke away from the main march, smashing shop and car windows.

One-day strikes in the public sector - from trains to schools - were much less successful than last week but there were more stoppages in private industry.

If President Jacques Chirac hoped that his partial retreat last Friday would break the momentum of public opposition to the "first job contracts" for the under 26s, he will have been disappointed.

The march may have been marginally smaller than last week - perhaps 200,000 people - but it was packed with school and university students, rather than trade-union and far-left militants. When the first protesters reached the end of the route in the Place de L'Italie, there were still many waiting to leave the Place de la République three miles away. Mostly, however, the demonstration was peaceful but determined.

"We have the government on the run," said Sébastien, 21, a history student from Paris 5 University. "But we must not give up in the final straight. Chirac may think that he can come back with a new law which is not much different than the first one. We are here to show him that he is wrong."

Talks begin today between student and union leaders and M. Chirac's centre-right party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), looking for common ground on a new law intended to reduce France's 23 per cent youth unemployment.

The Contrat Première Embauche (CPE) - or first job contract - was the brain-child of the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin. It would allow employers to fire people under 26 in the first two years without explanation. From small beginnings on a few university campuses, a storm of protest has blown up against M. Villepin's plan in the past four weeks. The Prime Minister, who is hoping to run for the presidency next year, has been deeply wounded. His positive opinion poll ratings fell to their lowest ever level yesterday to 28 per cent.

Last Friday, President Chirac said that he would sign the new law but he ordered the government to suspend it to start talks on a replacement. Opinions differ within M. Chirac's party - and among protesters - over whether this should be interpreted as a climbdown.

Union and student leaders say that they will not discuss amendments to the CPE, only its abolition and replacement. The number two in the government, Nicolas Sarkozy, who will guide the talks, made it clear that he is prepared to start from scratch. The Elysée Palace insists that something resembling the CPE must survive the negotiations.

There has been much debate in France whether the student-led revolt of March-April 2006 is a re-run of the May 1968 student rebellion. Compared to the optimistic mood 38 years ago, many young people yesterday seemed angry and depressed. One placard read "Desperately searching for a future" while others emblazoned "Non" on their foreheads. This compared with a 1968 slogan: "It is forbidden to forbid."

Airline boss criticises 'lazy frogs' over France hold-up

Published: 04 April 2006

A UK low-cost airline chief branded the French "lazy frogs" today after one of his planes was delayed flying back to Britain by protesting French students.

Philip Meeson, chief executive of Jet2.com, was incensed that French police allowed about 50 students to stage a runway sit-down that stopped around 100 passengers boarding a Boeing 737 at Chambery airport in the French Alps last night.

Eventually the plane was able to take off for Leeds Bradford airport, where it arrived 90 minutes late.

On his airline's website, Mr Meeson had complained last week about a strike by French air traffic controllers and called for "lazy frogs to get back to work".

Today he repeated the "lazy frogs" comment and said he was annoyed that French police had done nothing to stop the Chambery runway protest which also forced Jet2.com to divert a flight from Manchester to the French town of Grenoble as it was unable to land at Chambery.

In his website attack on French air traffic controllers last week, Mr Meeson said: "After a token stoppage, why can't you just sort the matter out amicably without bringing thousands of people around the world (who, I would like to add give your country huge economic wealth) into the argument?

"You choose to do the job you do and it's appalling that you are taking advantage of your dominant position by neglecting the responsibility you have to your customers ... yes that's right, holidaymakers pay your wages.

"Whilst France is undeniably a beautiful country (with equally good food and beer I hasten to add) we are appalled and quite frankly tired of the air traffic controllers' old fashioned attitude to dealing with any issues they may have.

"In short we urge the controllers to get back to work or get another job."

How well is the Merkel reform in Germany going?