Word: chirac
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Since the beginning of April, the French first employment contract, an attempt to encourage the hiring of youth under 26 by reducing their employment protection, has been the law of the land. But if there is such a thing as a Pyrrhic compromise, President Jacques Chirac and the millions who have taken to the streets to protest the law have found it. The French President has asked employers not to apply the law in its current form, and the changes it will undergo are unlikely to make it better at creating jobs for the one-quarter of French youth...
...nearly 11 years he's occupied the Elysée Palace, French President Jacques Chirac has promoted social and economic reform, yet shied away from the conflicts that invariably result. Last week he attempted another awkward balancing act after France saw more huge protests, some of them violent, against a new law allowing workers younger than 26 to be fired without cause within their first two years on the job. Thousands of students staging public sit-ins around the country booed as Chirac, speaking on TV, rejected their demands to repeal the law, then continued jeering as he ordered ruling...
...backing down Once passed by parliament, laws can only be derailed if ruled unconstitutional, reversed by new legislation or if they are blocked by a president citing a rarely-used executive privilege. The latter two options would mark political capitulation, for both de Villepin and his backer President Jacques Chirac, and "seriously undermine his leadership authority with the public only one year before the presidential election," says Stèphane Rozés, deputy director of the CSA polling agency...
...wake of the enormous protests across France today, Chirac cancelled planned trips out of Paris at the end of the week, when the key ruling is expected. If the courts rule in favor of the law - which for all intents and purposes would be against de Villepin - Chirac's protege could soon see his planned trip to the Presidential palace permanently cancelled...
...months, de Villepin has championed a policy of economic patriotism, putting in place a takeover law that gives the government a veto on deals in 11 sectors of the economy deemed to be strategic. They include biotechnology, arms manufacturing and casinos. But de Villepin's boss, President Jacques Chirac, blustered last week that it was "absolutely absurd" to think of France as protectionist, and he has a point. For much of the 1990s, France was the largest recipient of foreign investment in the European Union; by the end of 2003, one in seven French employees worked for a foreign company...