French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed on Sunday to press on with a new labor law that has fanned broad protests, pleading with the French to accept reforms to a brittle job market saddled with double-digit unemployment rates among the young.
De Villepin, speaking in a prime-time interview, vowed to work with labor leaders to defuse tensions that swelled a day earlier when riot police stormed a Paris university to remove some 200 students holed up inside to protest the new law. They fear it will hurt job security.
"This law will be applied, but I hope to complement the guarantees it brings with new guarantees that must be negotiated with our partners in labor groups," De Villepin said on TF1 television.
De Villepin said France needs to catch up with reforms already enacted in neighboring countries and reduce youth unemployment rates now at 23 percent. In some troubled suburbs the figure rises as high as 50 percent, he said.
Parliament on Thursday approved a law creating the "first job contract," which would make it easier for employers to hire and fire young workers during the first two years of employment. The measure is to take effect starting in next month.
Conservatives argue the greater flexibility will spur companies to bring on more youths.
Critics fear that the law will provide less job security for young workers and erode France's generous labor protections.
"Do we sit here with our arms folded ... our eyes down?" said an increasingly energized De Villepin, insisting that his personal political survival was not at issue. "This is a time of action."
"I will not accept leaving these youths on the side of the road," he said, offering a string of rhetorical questions.
"How do we envisage that France retain its place and keep its social model if we are unable to plan the necessary changes?" he said.
De Villepin, the driving force behind the jobs plan, has faced calls from fellow conservatives to reassure youths that they will be eligible for access to bank loans, housing and government compensation after the law is enacted.
He offered few new concrete measures on Sunday, but suggested that young workers who were laid off in the first two years could receive a temporary supplement to their unemployment insurance.
The left-leaning opposition, leading labor unions and France's biggest student groups have urged De Villepin to withdraw the measure and start from scratch with new talks.
Opponents were growing more defiant despite a police sweep into Paris' Sorbonne University before dawn on Saturday to evict students staging a sit-in.
Dozens of riot police vans lined Boulevard Saint-Michel, a central thoroughfare on Paris' Left Bank, near the university on Sunday.
Until the weekend, the protests had largely centered on labor groups and university students. But the top two unions of high school students called for classroom protests starting yesterday.
Nearly 400,000 people took part in peaceful demonstrations across France last week.
Student groups have called a new protest on Thursday and several unions were to join in yet another on Saturday.
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