France Scraps Controversial Jobs Law
French President Jacques Chirac bows to weeks of protests and announces plans to replace a controversial youth labor law. The decision is a blow to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had steadfastly backed the law as a way to reduce the high unemployment rate for young people.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
In France, President Jacques Chirac has bowed to weeks of mass protests and announced plans to replace a controversial youth labor law. The decision is a blow to France's Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, who had steadfastly backed the law as a way to reduce France's high unemployment rate for young people. The protests have cast a shadow over what's likely to be Chirac's last year in office, and threatens the political future of Villepin. Reporter Eleanor Beardsley joins me now from Paris. And Eleanor, do we know how the new law is different from the current, controversial one?
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY R: Well, they're being rather vague about the new law. The way it seems to be different is that it's specifically addressing disadvantaged youth and their job searches. So, it's sort of taking the heat off of the students-it's supposed to be much more specific, but other than that they haven't really said a lot about it.
MONTAGNE: And Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin made a brief appearance on television after the president's announcement. What did he say? And how did he appear?
BEARDSLEY R: Well, he appeared tense and solemn. They're describing his appearance that way, and they keep showing it over and over. He just gave a very short cut-and-dry statement saying that the old law would be replaced; he didn't say it would be withdrawn, he said it would be replaced by this new law that would focus on disadvantaged youth. And then he stressed that the country needed to move together-forward together to solve unemployment. And this is, sort of, underlining the fact that he is not planning to resign over this crisis.
MONTAGNE: Yeah. And about one in five young people are unemployed in France; what's the likely prospect that it will be reduced now that this law that, at least Villepin has so much hope for, is no longer.
BEARDSLEY R: Well, it's probably not likely that it will be reduced any time soon, although we don't know what this new plan will have in it. You know, the prime minister went about-he wanted to quickly tackle the youth unemployment, and that was his big mistake. He pushed this through-this first law through too fast. We can't really say, but the country's lost, you know, a couple months squabbling about this, and there's probably not a lot of hope that it will be reduced quickly.
MONTAGNE: And what about reducing protests and political problems for the French Government?
BEARDSLEY R: Believe it or not, the students are calling for protests. They say they're not going to back down until the parliament actually passes this new law. They say they don't trust the government, so they're actually calling for more demonstrations tomorrow.
MONTAGNE: Eleanor, thanks very much.
BEARDSLEY R: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Reporter Eleanor Bearsley, speaking from Paris.
Copyright © 2006 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.