FRANCE: Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin summons all ministers to crisis meeting after wave of protests against youth job plan that the government strongly supports

Record ID: 572316

  • Title: FRANCE: Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin summons all ministers to crisis meeting after wave of protests against youth job plan that the government strongly supports
  • Date: 16th March 2006
  • Summary: VARIOUS PROTESTORS ATTACKING POLICE
  • Embargoed: 31st March 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Employment,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6WKQ4GMUZ13CZMLJSV98AM0KQ
  • Story Text: French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has summoned on Wednesday (March 15) all ministers to a crisis meeting after the wave of protests against a youth job plan that the government strongly supports.
    Upon arrival, Dominique de Villepin said that the government was open to dialogue and ready to answer the youth's worries.
    "We are open to dialogue, we are all mobilised to answer the youth's fear and mobilised to better accompany them towards employment", he said.
    Earlier on Wednesday during a weekly cabinet meeting, French President French President Jacques Chirac urged unions and students to take up his government's offer of talks on the CPE (First youth working contract) law that has sparked mass protests around the country and rattled his prime minister.
    Members of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party have openly criticised the government for failing to talk to unions about the new job contract, which opponents say reduces job protection for young people.
    Students and trades unions have demanded the government scrap the law and leftwing lawmakers have mounted a legal challenge, asking France's top court to rule the measure unconstitutional.
    Chirac on Wednesday reaffirmed his support for embattled Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, whose popularity has tumbled during the biggest test of his 10 months in office.
    Unions and students say the law, which will allow companies to hire young workers for a two-year trial period before taking them on, will let companies fire them at will.
    Villepin has been the driving force behind the contract, which he says will bring down youth joblessness that was seen as a cause of riots in poor suburbs last year. Unemployment among under 25-year-olds is twice the national rate at 22.8 percent.
    Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy also met with police chiefs to discuss how to cope with any violence, notably at major demonstrations planned for Thursday (March 16) and Saturday (March 18).
    Around two-thirds of universities in France have been disrupted by the protests and school pupils have also mobilised in support of demands the jobs law been withdrawn.
    Demonstrations are watched nervously by governments in France because street protests in 1995 are widely seen as having been responsible for the defeat of conservative Prime Minister Alain Juppe in snap elections two years later.
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