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Dominique de Villepin prepares for his televised address after the jobs law cave-in (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)
French student leaders celebrated "a decisive victory" today
after President Chirac announced that he was ditching a contentious new jobs
law that would have made it easier for employers to sack young workers.
The cave-in was announced in a brief statement from the Elysée Palace
after two months of protests brought millions onto the streets of France.
"The President of the Republic has decided to replace Article 8 of the
law on equal opportunities with measures in favour of the professional insertion
of young people in difficulty," it said.
The decision is a major blow to the credibility of M Chirac and his protégé
Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister who had been groomed to replace M
Chirac in next year's presidential elections.
It was M de Villepin who championed the First Employment Contract (CPE) as
an attempt to bring down youth unemployment from an average of over 22 per cent.
The law would have allowed employers to fire workers under the age of 26 without
giving a reason during their first two years of employment. It provoked the
most serious mass protests France has seen since the student strikes of May
1968.
In a televised address, a sombre M de Villepin said: "The necessary conditions
of trust and serenity were not present, either among young people or businesses,
to allow the implementation of the First Employment Contract."
The Prime Minister explained that his original legislation - introduced after
a frenzy of rioting in immigrant estates around Paris and other cities late
last year - had been designed to curb the "despair of many youths"
while striking a better balance between flexibility for employers and security
for workers.
"This was not understood by everyone, I'm sorry to say," he said.
M Chirac signed the CPE into law earlier this month, but had already announced
that it would be immediately suspended while conservative deputies tried to
find a way out of the crisis.
Unions and student groups, which had been demanding the measure’s complete
withdrawal, were to meet later today decide what further action to take, although
some student leaders suggested that the battle was now over.
Bruno Juillard, a key student leader, hailed M Chirac’s announcement
as "a decisive victory", but urged the protestors to keep up the pressure
until Parliament votes on a new law superceding the CPE.
Another student leader, Julie Coudry, called immediately for protesters to
lift the blockades that have paralysed dozens of French universities so that
students could prepare for end-of-year examinations. "The CPE is dead,
the CPE is well and truly finished," she said.
"If there is a new text in which the CPE does not appear, that will mean
it has been withdrawn. That is what counts," added Francois Chereque, head
of the CFDT union.