France’s anemic attempts to reduce youth unemployment from over 20% have met with robust resistance, since the reforms would entail easier hiring and firing. The unemployment initiative had been personally crafted by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in the wake of the widespread Muslim riots last fall that France officially decided to explain and excuse under the mantle of weak economic opportunities. The kids weren’t buying any of it, and so took to the barricades (Telegraph):

1,200 riot police stormed the Sorbonne and evicted around 200 students who had been staging a sit-in in Paris’s historic university - the centre of the student riots of May 1968. The students were calling on Mr de Villepin to drop his First Employment Contract (CPE) - a youth job scheme aimed at cutting France’s woeful youth unemployment rate by making it easier to hire and fire young recruits in their first two years in a company. They argue that the scheme - a personal initiative of the prime minister - simply increases job insecurity…

What a swell country France is. The government tried to cover the Muslim riots with a lie, and the lie brought further riots by a (we think) different group. As we have said previously, when government spending accounts for 57% of GDP (2x that of USA), only radical surgery can save the patient. We wonder: will both groups riot together come spring?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 13th, 2006 at 10:17 am and is filed under EU, General, business, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.