Word: villepin
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...save life that French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin last year announced the decree prohibiting smoking in any "collectively used area" in both public and private venues. The measure, which came into force on Thursday, limits indoor smoking in collectively-used areas to sealed "fumoirs," the specifications for which are so rigid and so costly that few have been built. To enforce the law, some 175,000 agents - primarily labor and health inspectors - have begun scrutinizing places of work, commerce and administration during their rounds for signs or smells of illicit puffing. They can fine errant smokers $88, and employers...
...beginning of 2006, French prime minister Dominique de Villepin lamented the chorus of commentators gleefully singing dirges for France. A year later, he has his counterexample: in 2006, France pushed past Ireland to become the most fecund nation in the European Union, with an average of two babies per woman. Is there any surer sign that the French aren't embracing decline so much as they are each other? The Lyons daily Le Progrès was among those expressing congratulations to the women of France. "Bravo for having done this in such a gloomy climate," wrote its editorialist. "Everyone...
...public attacks have been relatively subtle, but unmistakable. Having taken heat from the Socialists for eliminating "proximity policing," Sarkozy claimed beat cops in the troubled suburbs hadn't been effective. That's when Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, instead of backing his party colleague, thought it opportune to propose "tranquility police" - same thing, different name. Defense Minister Mich?le Alliot-Marie, another Chiraquien, suggested at a UMP conference last week that "we shouldn't treat all youth like they're delinquents." An obvious enough truth, but a claque booed and whistled, seeing it as a hit on Sarkozy's tough...
...Support for Redeker has been widespread - but sometimes nuanced. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called his situation "unacceptable," a message forcefully echoed by French newspapers and teachers' unions. The minister of education, however, said that state employees should be "prudent, moderate and wise in all circumstances" - an implicit criticism that infuriated many of Redeker's supporters...
...Catholic boarding school and the University of Nancy before attaining the classical educational polish of the French political élite: a degree from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and another from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), where her class included the current Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, and her partner, Socialist Party secretary François Hollande. She met Hollande there in 1978 and had their first child...