Jacques Chirac doesn’t like capitalism that much

Another month in France, another excuse for mass protests. This month, the justification has been a law proposed by French prime minister Dominique de Villepin that would make it easier for employers to fire younger workers. The thinking is that this would encourage firms will hire more workers. Needless to say, the French unions disagreed. The Financial Times' Martin Arnold reports that de Villepin is ready to cave: Dominique de Villepin will hold talks with trade unions ?with no strings attached? on Friday over his unpopular employment law, a move widely interpreted as a climbdown by the embattled French premier.... The meeting could happen on Friday. But the offer for it came only after a long and reportedly heated meeting with President Jacques Chirac, fuelling rumours that the prime minister was ordered to back down. The new law, which allows companies to fire people aged under 26 in the first two years of their contract without reason, has sparked widespread protests by students and workers which erupted into violence in central Paris yesterday.... Unions want the law withdrawn. Fran?ois Ch?r?que, leader of the moderate CFDT union, said: ?If the prime minister does not respond positively to our demand to withdraw the first job contract, we will end the conversation.? Critics suspect Mr de Villepin has fallen into the same trap as his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, ousted after leading France to military defeat at Waterloo. Analysts, opposition Socialists and members of his own centre-right UMP party said he had tried to push reform too far, too fast, in pursuit of his personal ambitions. ?President Chirac has told him to back down as he was leading the country to the wall,? said Dominique Moisi, a senior adviser at France?s Institute for International Relations. ?He tried to convince himself he could be France?s Margaret Thatcher, but forgot he was only the number two.? Chirac's hostility to any idea with a whiff of Anglo-Saxon provenance is also demonstrated in this FT story by George Parker and Chris Smyth: Jacques Chirac, French president, defended his walkout on Thursday night from the EU summit ? after a French industrialist began addressing leaders of the bloc in English ? saying he had been ?profoundly shocked to see a Frenchman express himself in English at the (EU) Council table?. Mr Chirac and two senior French ministers walked out in protest at the decision of Ernest-Antoine Seilli?re, head of the Unice employers organisation, to make a plea for economic reform in what he called ?the language of business?. Mr Chirac?s boycott reflected the tensions surrounding the two-day economic summit, which comes against a backdrop of French street protests over labour market reform and claims that Paris is engaged in protectionism of its energy market. The French president was not in the room to hear Mr Seilli?re urging leaders to ?resist national protectionism in order to avoid a negative domino effect?. He returned after Mr Seilli?re had finished speaking.