Fighting change, 1 million bring France to a halt
As demonstrations continue, criticism mounts in Europe
PARIS -- Bitter opposition to a new law making it easier for French companies to fire young workers brought at least 1 million protesters into the streets of France yesterday, deepening an eight-week-old political crisis that could shatter Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's chances of winning the presidency next year.
Ignoring the anger spreading across the land, President Jacques Chirac -- de Villepin's patron -- signed the bill into law on Sunday, apparently gambling that public outrage will diminish over time.
A nationwide one-day strike shut down the Eiffel Tower, snarled air and rail traffic to Paris, and caused tourists to flee as tear gas wafted through the City of Light. Police fought running battles with rock- and bottle-hurling anarchists who smashed windows, tore down street signs, and ripped out park benches. Hundreds of arrests were reported.
Most demonstrators were peaceful, however, and their chants against the new economic policies reflected an angst felt widely across Europe as governments prune social programs and ease labor protection laws to meet the challenges of a global economy.
Yet the French upheaval is winning little sympathy across the continent, even though similar economic issues bedevil neighboring nations and even though the protesters present themselves as standard bearers in Europe's struggle against American-style ''market reforms" that are resented by many workaday people from Barcelona to Berlin.
''We French people are bravely insisting on what every European should see as a right -- employment security, social benefits, a decent life," said Jeanine-Marie Marsan, 22, a graduate student of literature who swapped Proust for a protest placard yesterday and was among the peaceful demonstrators.
''The politicians are trying to make our societies into little mirrors of the United States -- where dollars count for everything and people count for nothing," she said as fellow protesters shouted slogans at police in riot gear near the Sorbonne, the elite university that has become one of several epicenters in a national revolt. ''In France, we are drawing a line against such a cruel new future."
Steel mesh barriers and police vehicles armed with water cannons guarded key intersections in Paris as phalanxes of marchers from nearly every strata of society turned out against the controversial new labor law. Police said at least a million protesters filled the streets across France. Protest organizers put the number at 3 million. It was the fifth major demonstration against the labor law since early February.
''We are in a profoundly dangerous situation," said Francois Dubet, a leading French social scientist. ''Anger is up, aggression is up. The government has opened a Pandora's box."
The rest of Europe has largely greeted the massive, occasionally bloody protests with shrugs rather than any sense of continental solidarity. Indeed, many analysts say, the huge outpouring of anger against the government's relatively modest efforts at economic change shows how dramatically France has fallen out of step with the rest of Europe -- where more painful changes have been accepted, albeit grudgingly, as a necessary antidote to joblessness and economic stagnation.
''France seems more frightened of the future than any other European country," said Martin Koopmann, head of the France program at German Council of Foreign Relations, better known as the DGAP. ''This is the country that was once seen as a great leader of unified Europe. Now it appears isolationist and insecure."
European editorialists have been piling on criticisms of France, with Germany's Die Welt newspaper saying the country is infected by ''the virus of reality denial," while Spain's El País accused the French of ''going to extremes" to protect an economic system in profound need of overhaul.
Beyond their opposition to the market reforms, the French protesters also are balking at the political and economic integration deemed critical to forging a truly united Europe.
Last year, French voters shot down a proposed European constitution by voting ''Non." Last month, Chirac stalked out of a European Union summit meeting because English was spoken in his presence by a French business lobbyist based in Brussels -- even though English, like French, is one of the official languages of the 25-nation bloc.
Yesterday, demonstrators again took to the streets to decry the new labor law, which many economists believe could create jobs in a society gripped by some of the worst unemployment levels in Europe.
Not since the angry days of 1968 have protesters taken to the streets of Paris and other French cities in such huge numbers as during the past few weeks. But for all the red banners and clenched fists now, the country's worsening political crisis seemed to be fired less by bold visions of a different future than by a grumbly refusal to accept economic change.
''We're caught in one of the huge psychodramas that the French so love," Claude Bebear, chairman of the insurance giant
At the heart of the uproar that has cost the French economy hundreds of millions of dollars in a series of national strikes is a new labor law that enables employers to more easily hire and fire workers under age 26. The law, known as the First Employment Contract, was meant to encourage employers to hire more young people by allowing companies to lay them off or fire them outright during their first two years on the job.
French labor law makes it very difficult to dismiss even unproductive full-time employees. As a result, firms have been reluctant to add permanent workers, thus exacerbating unemployment in a country where the jobless rate is 9.6 percent overall and more than 23 percent among young people. The idea behind the measure is that a bit less security for young workers will give companies confidence to create more jobs.
Unions are deeply opposed to the new law. So too are university students, who say the intent of the government is to create a ''disposable" workforce. Their protests have been joined by a surprisingly broad spectrum of ordinary folk, with transport workers, civil servants, postal carriers, teachers, and electrical workers among those who have participated in a series of national strikes.
Additionally, the workers and university students have been joined by the country's already restive Muslim minorities. France was shaken last fall by violent protests by Arab and African immigrants, who suffer not only from the worst joblessness -- reckoned to be 50 percent among youths -- but bad schools, high crime rates, and blighted public housing.
The French protests, other analysts believe, also reflect the nation's growing unease over its place in the world. Once the kingpin of the EU, France has seen its influence erode amid the new member-nations from eastern Europe, many of which look more to Germany for leadership within the bloc and to the United States for leadership on the broader world stage.
More critically, some analysts argue that the turmoil in France is the fruit of arrogance by political leaders.
''In other European countries, there is plenty of complaining -- but also constant dialogue and compromise over these painful new realities," Koopmann said. ''In France, there are pronouncements from on high. This deepens mistrust between ordinary people and the political elite."
But the unwillingness to debate cuts two ways. Union leaders, student organizers, and other hardcore opponents of de Villepin and Chirac have loudly scorned the government's recent offer to soften the new law, insisting that protests will continue until the measure is utterly squashed.
''The French have a political culture of protest," said Sabine von Oppeln, a political scientist. ''If you disagree with something, you don't try to negotiate, you don't reach for compromise, you take your anger to the street. Protest is a democratic right, of course. But a culture of protest makes it hard to achieve national consensus."
