Paris students hold victory march

Students walk near a sign which reads, "Paris University XIII Fights On", in reference to the First Job Contract during a march in Paris. Picture / Reuters

PARIS - French students staged sporadic victory marches across France on Tuesday the day after President Jacques Chirac axed a hire-and-fire youth jobs law that had drawn millions onto the streets in protest.

A few thousand students marched across France, just a fraction of the estimated one million who had marched a week earlier to demand the withdrawal of the First Job Contract (CPE), which made it easier for employers to sack young workers.

Parliament was due to start debating measures to help disadvantaged young people find work designed by the ruling Union for a Popular Movement to replace the CPE and end two months of crisis.

Police said 2,300 people had marched in Paris on Tuesday, compared with 700,000 last week before the government U-turn, and the lower turnout was repeated in provincial towns across the country.

"What's happening today is that there is some wavering ... but one should not conclude that our movement is dead," said Anna Melun of the main Unef students' union in Toulouse, where up to 3,000 students marched.

About 100 students in the southwestern city blocked two bus depots for four hours.

As CPE opponents vowed to keep up their guard until parliament voted through new measures for young workers, Education Minister Gilles de Robien said life at most of France's 84 universities for weeks was returning to normal.

"Things are returning to normal pretty much everywhere," he told parliament.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who emerged strengthened after his rival Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was forced to withdraw the law, argued that the government's flip-flop did not mean Paris was unable to pass needed but unpopular changes.

"I don't think the French refuse reforms," he told Europe 1 radio.

"The French accept change but always want to be assured that it is fair. They found these proposals unfair."

The law, which was aimed at reducing a youth unemployment rate of 22 per cent, allowed firms to sack a worker aged under 26 at any stage during a two-year trial period.

Sarkozy said there was little room for change in the twilight of Chirac's 12-year presidency: "You don't reform the same way at the end of an administration as you do at the beginning."

The business daily La Tribune went further, saying that no important reform could be undertaken before a presidential election in 2007 when Chirac is expected to step down.

Student protesters have demonised both Villepin and Sarkozy and one banner on Tuesday said: "Villepin we got you, Sarko you're next."

Some 3,400 people were arrested over five days of nationwide protests against the CPE in two months, Sarkozy said.

CGT union leader Bernard Thibault said he wanted to focus on the CNE job contract which, like the CPE, allows employers to hire and fire at will during a two-year trial period. The CNE applies to small firms, while the CPE covered workers under the age of 26.

In sharp contrast to the victory mood among protesters, the president of Medef, a union of business leaders, said the withdrawal of the CPE had shaken economic confidence.

Laurence Parisot praised Villepin for having had the courage to make a link between the rigidity of the labour market and unemployment and said that unions "were wrong to see this as a victory. After victories like this we will all become losers."

- REUTERS