Chirac on the Spot

French President Jacques Chirac kisses Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's hand after a meeting at the Elysee Palace. Reuters photo here.

Perhaps he is wishing she were his protege instead of Dominique de Villepin, to save him from the consequences of his failed policies of years. French courts have ruled that the new labor law, which makes it easier to hire and fire French youth is constitutional, so the buck stops with Chirac to drag France into the modern world of market-based economies. AP:

France's Constitutional Council upheld a new law Thursday making it easier to fire young workers, a measure that sparked nationwide strikes by labor unions and violent protests by students.

The council's decision puts the onus on President Jacques Chirac to either implement the law as is at the risk of further unrest or negotiate a compromise, perhaps by sending the law back to parliament or by proposing modifications.

As Theodore Dalrymple points out in the London Times, "The Striking Idiocy of Youth":

THE SIGHT OF MILLIONS of Frenchmen, predominantly young, demonstrating in deep sympathy and solidarity with themselves, is one that will cause amusement and satisfaction on the English side of the Channel.

Dalrymple points out British Labor policies foster some of the same promises from the State that it will be unable to keep. In any event, elite naval-gazing French youth are totally ignoring their poor cohorts in the suburbs:

Whether they know it or not, the people on the streets in France were demonstrating to keep the youth of the banlieues — who recently so amused the world for an entire fortnight with their arsonist antics — exactly where they are, namely hopeless, unemployed and feeling betrayed. For unless the French labour market is liberalised, they will never find employment and therefore integration into French society. You have only to speak to a few small businessmen or artisans in France — the petits bourgeois so vehemently despised by the snobbish intellectuals — to find out why this should be so. The French labour regulations make employment of untried persons completely uneconomic for them.

So Jacques Chirac is on the spot with French youth, and a little hand-kissing won't get him out of it.