New French PM labours to form government

France’s new Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin worked today to form a government and tackle the nation’s top priority – unemployment. But he already faced labour unrest on his first day on the job.

A planned strike by workers at the national train authority, the SNCF, was due to begin at 8pm (7pm Irish Time), emblematic of the tough road ahead for a government drawing criticism even before it’s been formed.

It was not clear when the Cabinet would be named, with some suggesting it might be as late as Friday.

President Jacques Chirac, addressing the nation yesterday evening hours aftr appointing de Villepin, set reducing France’s 10% jobless rate as the No. 1 priority. He called on unions and employers to pitch in.

Chirac named de Villepin in an effort to give “new impetus” to the government after France rejected a constitution for Europe. The referendum result was seen as a sanction of Chirac and the government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

De Villepin faced an uphill battle in forming a government that would respond to citizens’ discontent.

Finding politicians willing to serve could complicate the task. The centrist Union for French Democracy, an important component of the breadth Chirac’s right needs to assure credibility, announced last night that it would not be part of the new team.

De Villepin’s own appointment was met with a flurry of criticism. A former career diplomat who has never held elected office and whose name has an aristocrat ring, de Villepin is seen as a privileged product of the Chirac machine.

Chirac also named Nicolas Sarkozy, his ambitious rival and a potential presidential candidate in 2007, to the No. 2 post heading the interior ministry. It is a combination that the daily Le Parisien dubbed in bold headlines ”Explosif!”

On the left, Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande today criticised the “confusion” that he said the de Villepin-Sarkozy team represents with “two prime ministers following two different policies.”