Posted on 04/10/2006 8:10:49 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Under the contrat première embauche (CPE), employers would have been able to sack workers under 26 during their first two years in a job without giving a reason... Having initially backed his preferred successor, Jacques Chirac predictably havered, then ceded to pressure from the street. Yesterday, he announced that the CPE, which was rammed through parliament in March, would be abandoned in favour of less controversial measures to create jobs in a country where youth unemployment is more than 20 per cent. This surrender puts paid to any significant reform at least until after the presidential election in May next year. As a prospective candidate, Mr de Villepin has been fatally weakened and the stock of the other Right-wing pretender, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and head of the ruling party, has correspondingly risen.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
99 percent of French agree: "No more Chirac"
Expatica | 12/11/2005 | AFP
Posted on 12/12/2005 1:25:15 PM EST by LM_Guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1538903/posts
France: Sarkozy pushes ahead with new immigration plan.
Expatica | 03/29/06 | AFP
Posted on 04/01/2006 3:31:27 PM EST by Pikamax
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607551/posts
Chirac retreats on youth labor law - Law to be scrapped
MarketWatch | 8/10/06 | Aude Lagorce
Posted on 04/10/2006 9:51:44 AM EDT by XR7
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1612369/posts
Berlusconi clings to power(Liberals deeply saddend)
ABC
Posted on 04/10/2006 6:05:54 PM EDT by John Geyer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612660/posts
France surrendered again, to themselves.
Le Pen Seeks To Be Le PrezFrance's far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the runner-up in the 2002 presidential election, said yesterday he planned to run in next year's race.
NY Post
Le Pen caused a political shock when he finished ahead of Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in 2002.
Conservative President Jacques Chirac easily beat Le Pen in the run-off, but only after some left-wing voters backed Chirac.
Asked on TF1 television if he would be a candidate, Le Pen said: "Absolutely, with a serious chance."
Waiting for Sarkozy?The candidate is Nicolas Sarkozy, currently the tough minister of the Interior and leader of the majority UMP (Union for Popular Movement) party. Once a young protege of Chirac, who dated Chirac's daughter, he has been treated as a political enemy since he chose to support another conservative rival in an earlier tussle for the presidential nomination... his call for 'la rupture' or a clear break from France's current system of government makes him the most credible reformer on the political scene. Sarko supports free enterprise and professes to admire the Anglo-Saxon economies like Britain and the United States with their low taxes and low unemployment, even as Chirac denounces the economic liberalism of the Anglo-Saxons as the capitalist equivalent of the law of the jungle. Only last year, Chirac called this kind of liberalism 'worse than communism.' ...Sarko... has left little doubt that the problem, in Sarko's eyes, has been Chirac and his new protege, the unelected and arrogant Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who rammed the new law through the National assembly late at night, without consultation and by tacking it onto a quite unrelated bill.
by Martin Walker
Apr 10, 2006
It's difficult to see what de Villepin had in mind. I've read (on FR) that the measure was a way to coopt the right wing vote from Sarkozy, and that at first it seemed to work. I doubt that -- it appeared to me that the employment reform never had any support at all. Perhaps that was de Villepin's intention (to coopt the right wing vote), but it was probably (if that is the case) directed toward Le Pen.
France's Sarkozy calls for compromise over jobs law
Reuters | Sat Mar 25, 2006 8:55 AM EST | Thierry Leveque
Posted on 03/25/2006 11:55:08 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1603245/posts
Sad, but that's France for ya...
This is a very dangerous moment for France and Europe: essentially a solid majority of the French have turned their back on free-markets (or even the social-market) and democracy, and a majority of the political parties (Socialists, Communists and Le Pen) are more than happy to stoke the fascistic fantasies of the French to gain power.
The program they would all love to implement is one that seals off the French economy from foreign (even European) competition, followed internally by draconian measures to ensure whatever party is in opposition is criminalized, i.e., they all want a one party state.
Yeah, Chirac. He's just a big... pussy cat.
President Chirac's welcome to the Zimbabwean leader
was laden with messages
French Students Protest, Despite Victory
AP via Yahoo | 4/11/06 | JENNY BARCHFIELD
Posted on 04/11/2006 3:51:46 PM EDT by GeorgiaDawg32
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1613278/posts
This is a very dangerous moment for France and Europe: essentially a solid majority of the French have turned their back on free-markets (or even the social-market) and democracyOh, I think that happened quite a while back. :')
EU to Enforce Mass Deportation of Illegal Immigrants
ZAMAN | Wednesday July 06, 2005
Posted on 07/06/2005 10:46:35 AM EDT by new cruelty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1437579/posts
Possible woman president in France.
Madame Royal could be France's next president
THE GUARDIAN | 01/18/2005
Posted on 01/18/2006 7:53:09 AM EST by montreal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1560185/posts
Sarkozy Reaches Out To Far-Right Voters (France)
The Guardian (UK) | 4-24-2006 | Kim Willsher
Posted on 04/23/2006 10:56:17 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620294/posts
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