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Villepin's Bad Hair Day
Did France's unelected prime minister Dominique de Villepin foresee the trouble ahead when he pushed the First Employment Contract (CPE) through parliament? The PM chose not to negotiate with union leaders - the first port of call for any leader attempting to introduce labour law reform - and passed the new law under emergency rules brought in during last autumn's riots.
The unions were furious. With union membership falling, union leaders are quite prickly about any reform that plays down their influence. Villepin's rushing through of the CPE seemed calculated to anger them.
Students, faced with youth unemployment of around 25 percent when they graduate, saw the CPE as a contribution to their precarité. Unions and ministers haven't exactly gone out of their way to secure solutions to unemployment in the past - indeed, unions seem to see it as a necessary evil to protect their privileges - so one could argue that for many youngsters, resentment was simmering and ready to blow.
Unqualified youngsters from France's poor suburbs had an ever worse deal. They face unemployment of up to 50 percent - and the law was rushed through by the PM as a way to persuade employers to take on new staff. However, rather than support the CPE, which offers at least some youngsters a way out of the impoverished housing schemes, many suburban youths have joined the students in protesting against it. Worse, others have used the protests as an excuse to relive the glory days of November 2005, fighting police, burning property and assaulting anyone - fellow protestor, student, passerby, policeman - who happens to cross their paths.
While the majority of yesterday's protests passed off peacefully, a violent minority caused some ugly scenes, particularly in Paris' Place de la République, where police fired tear gas at vandals and casseurs.
The police were braced for trouble. Over 4000 were mobilised in Paris alone, while forces were sent to 100 other towns and cities across the country where protests were expected.
In Paris, officers waited on the platforms of train and metro stations, checking ID papers in a bid to prevent hooligans from the suburbs infiltrating the marches. When the trouble did start, police fired paintballs to tag offenders. Plain clothes cops then stepped in to haul troublemakers out of the march - though, oddly, the cops were met with cries of "fascist" and "racist" from some student protestors, even though they were in some cases preventing thugs from mugging the students themselves.
The worst may be yet to come. More protests are planned for Thursday, and Villepin's offer of talks has been snubbed once again by union leaders and student groups.
The FT reports that some UMP insiders not-so-secretly hope that the CPE law will be ruled unconstitutional by France's courts. This would provide a way for both sides to walk away with their pride intact. However, both unions and students have scented blood, and the union leaders, at least, might prefer an outright victory rather than a moral one. The PM's shaky support among government ministers - and news that President Chirac is planning to intervene personally in the debate - makes the situation even more precarious for Villepin.
One protestor yesterday carried a sign declaring that Dominique de Villepin's "trial period" is up.
A recent poll suggested that female French voters liked Villepin because he has a good haircut. Now he needs a police escort to go to the barber. However, the significance of the street trouble will not be lost on the Prime Minister. A few years ago, he wrote: "In France reform appears to be against our nature; only revolution seems capable of overcoming inertia."
His words, it seems, have come to haunt him.
