Paris riots over new youth jobs contracts

French police clashed with youths protesting a government jobs plan yesterday in an hours-long melee in the French capital that left nine officers injured, one hit in the face with a paving stone, officials said.

Police sprayed tear gas and charged the crowd to counter stones, bottles and even metal barricades heaved at security forces in a second night of unrest.

Police headquarters said at least nine people were arrested during five hours of running confrontations in the Latin Quarter, the Left Bank student neighbourhood.

The clashes followed a spontaneous march by an estimated 4,000 students from southern Paris to the Sorbonne University, closed due to the troubles.

At least nine officers were injured, including a member of the riot police force who received a paving stone in the face, police said. It was not immediately clear whether there were injuries among students.

After the march, several hundred youths, some wearing masks, defied police by lobbing projectiles and smoke bombs while others looked on. At one point, about 100 youths from extreme-right groups arrived to face off the students opposed to the jobs plan.

Confrontations between police and students have continued off and on since early Saturday, when riot police swarmed into the Sorbonne to dislodge hundreds of students occupying the landmark institution, some for three days.

At least 17 of France’s 84 universities are on strike to protest a new work contract designed to encourage employers to hire the young, but allowing the new hires to be fired at any moment in the first two years. There were partial disruptions at 28 universities around the country.

The question now is whether Dominique de Villepin’s chance of being the next French president is going up in clouds of tear gas.

The snowballing student protests are presenting President Jacques Chirac’s supposed preferred successor with one of his sternest tests yet in his nine-month tenure as prime minister.

Villepin, a debonair former diplomat who made his name abroad with his impassioned 2003 United Nations speech against the Iraq invasion, is showing no signs of bending to the student and opposition demands that he abandon the new work contract.

But his political future and ability to enact further reforms ahead of next year’s presidential vote could hinge on how the political confrontation plays out in the next few weeks.

Villepin, a Chirac protégé, has staked his authority on bringing down France’s unemployment rate, still hovering at close to 10% and more than double that among young adults.

Although ministers recognise that the contract’s loosening of French labour laws is causing concern, they also argue that France, like other European nations, must reform to compete against rising powers like China, where labour costs are far lower and protections for workers sparse.

“Allowing young people to believe that we can give them a job without changing anything in our country is false,” Villepin said yesterday in parliament, where he and other ministers were peppered with opposition lawmakers’ questions and criticism.

On Tuesday, senior members of Chirac’s party and the president himself closed ranks with the prime minister. Chirac broke his habit of not publicly discussing French domestic politics while on visits abroad, telling a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin that he supports Villepin “totally and without reservations.”

Youth employment is a “delicate problem which confronts all European governments,” he said.

Critics on the left, conscious that the issue could swing support their way and undermine Villepin ahead of the 2007 presidential and legislative races, say the new contract will provide less job security for youths and erode France’s generous labour protections.

The Socialists have asked the Constitutional Council, which rules on the constitutionality of French laws, to strike down the legislation that created the new contract. The council has a month to rule – or eight days if the government asks it to reach a decision urgently.