Urgent French jobs plan ruffles feathers

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin presented a bill yesterday that would bypass parliament and urgently push through the government’s new jobs plan, a move that enraged the opposition.

De Villepin has made defeating France’s double-digit unemployment the priority of his administration and says his plan would get bogged down if it had to go through lawmakers. He has pledged to start the conservative government’s €4.5bn job plan on September 1.

“We have to act quickly,” de Villepin said in an evening interview with France-3 television. “How do we get an urgent plan put in place by September 1? By ordinance. If not it would take months and months.”

The bill de Villepin presented yesterday to cabinet ministers would allow him to circumvent parliament and pass the measures by decree.

“Your mission is to obtain results for jobs,” Villepin told the cabinet, according to government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope.

The bill itself is scheduled to go before parliament, where the right holds a majority, shortly, with final approval expected mid-July.

Villepin has said his mission is to “get France going again” and to tackle the country’s 10.2% unemployment. His plan has a number of measures aimed at encouraging small companies to hire by reducing some of their tax and administrative burdens.

The plan also authorises the government to do away with age limits in the public sector and gives special treatment to people who have been unemployed for more than 18 months.

“We have exhausted traditional solutions,” President Jacques Chirac said, according to Cope.

But the opposition blasted Villepin’s method as downright undemocratic.

Leading Socialist lawmaker Jean-Marc Ayrault accused de Villepin of “being afraid of parliament”.

He urged the prime minister to “let the parliament play its role”.

Centrist party UDF plans to vote against the plan, said party spokesman Francois Sauvadet, who said this amounts to parliament “divesting itself”. He added that de Villepin’s approach made him sceptical.

“On a subject that is as important as jobs, to say to parliament: ’Go away, there’s nothing for you here,’ it’s not a good sign.”

De Villepin urged his critics to rally behind the cause of boosting jobs and present a unified front.

“We know the economic situation that is confronting us,” de Villepin said during his television interview.

"Do you really think that at a time like this we should be divided?”