France: French president Jacques Chirac announced yesterday he would sign a controversial youth job law despite weeks of protests, but promised it would be amended immediately to weaken two of its most disputed reforms.
Mr Chirac said the amendments would shorten to one year the period in which youths could be fired and require employers to give a reason for dismissing them.
Trade union and student leaders promptly rejected his proposals as insufficient and vowed to press on with their protests, including a nationwide action day next Tuesday.
Even before he spoke, students gathered in Paris and other main cities to continue their protests against the First Job Contract (CPE), which proposed to let employers fire workers under 26 without specifying cause during their first two years on the job.
"It is time to defuse the situation," Mr Chirac said in the televised speech, in which he insisted that he understood the concerns of youths who could not find jobs.
Youth unemployment is running at 22 per cent, well above France's 9.6 per cent national average.
Mr Chirac's long-awaited speech seemed aimed at striking a balance between prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who wanted the law applied promptly and in full, and millions of protesters who demand it be scrapped before any compromise could be discussed.
Mr de Villepin pushed the law through parliament last month, arguing that France must reform its rigid labour code quickly to fight youth unemployment. Students and workers reacted with the biggest protests seen here in years.
Jean-Claude Mailly, head of the Force Ouvrière union, called Mr Chirac's proposals "incomprehensible and unacceptable". Bernard Thibault of the pro-communist CGT union said: "We stick to the call for mobilisation now more than ever."
"We were waiting for the president to listen to the message that young people and workers have been sending for more than two months and to withdraw the CPE First Job Contract," said Bruno Julliard, president of student body UNEF.
"And what does he tell us? He lays out the same arguments that we have heard for weeks. We are not more convinced this evening."
BNP Paribas senior economist Dominique Barbet also saw the unrest continuing: "The law has been largely emptied of content but the trade unions, students and opposition just refuse the law altogether so the protests are likely to continue."
In his speech, Mr Chirac said he had heard "the worries that many youths and their parents express" and he wanted to respond.
"In our republic, when the national interest is at stake, there should be neither winners nor losers. We should now close ranks," he said after outlining his plans.
In a gesture to the students, he said no CPE contract could be signed until the new changes had been voted, even though the original law would be valid because of his signature on it.
Opposition Socialist Party leader François Hollande said Mr Chirac had "made things more complicated where he should have made them more simple".
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the governing UMP party and Mr de Villepin's main rival to be the conservative candidate in the 2007 presidential election, praised Mr Chirac's speech - which echoed suggestions he had been making.
Mr Chirac also proposed that trade unions, students and high school pupils join what he called a "constructive social dialogue" to draw up the amendments to the law. To make changes after the original law is signed, the governing UMP party could change the order of business in the National Assembly next week to introduce follow-up amendments along the lines Mr Chirac suggested, deputies said.
- (Reuters)