Parisians join 'subdued' protest

By Caroline Wyatt
BBC News, Paris

Police said a million people turned out to protest

The demonstrations began in bright sunshine in the French capital as hundreds of thousands of people gathered at Place de la Republique.

The scene of violence at the end of last week's protest marches, on Tuesday there was an altogether different atmosphere.

The square was awash with colour, the red and yellow balloons of the trade unions silhouetted against a blue spring sky, the mild weather bringing out three million people across France, according to the trade unions, or one million according to the French police.

In Paris, the crowd that marched chanting anti-government slogans was made up of young and old, walking together in solidarity with the under-26s who would be affected by the unpopular new youth jobs law known here by its initials, the CPE.

Students lounged on the base of the Statue of Liberty at the centre of the square, pinning up posters reading "Resistance" and "Down with Chirac and De Villepin" or the blunt "Withdraw the CPE".

Student demands

Students want the government to withdraw the legislation

Florian, a political science student, said that this march was to hammer home the demand that the government withdraw the contracts entirely, because they have become for many the symbol of a liberal Anglo-Saxon style market economy that many in France - especially on the left - continue to vehemently reject.

"We don't want to be like that," he said, "We want an answer to unemployment that is French."

Some of the fire seems to have gone out of the demonstrations, though, and even the skirmishes between the waiting riot police and hooded youths at the end of the march at Place d'Italie seemed desultory, as though even the trouble-makers' hearts were not quite in it any more.

Though the national and international media were camped out ready with satellite vans and live positions overlooking the square, only a few hundred youths remained by 9 p.m..

A few fisticuffs between rival gangs led to some excited running around, but this time the riot police had also reworked their tactics - sending in plainclothes snatch squads to pick out trouble-makers and drag them off before any real fights got going.

As for the demonstrators, many left the square early to get home in time to watch Lyon play in a televised football match. In Paris at least, the mood on the streets seemed a little more subdued and more sombre than last week.

Dying down

Some trade unionists admitted privately that this would probably be the last major nationwide show of union muscle for the time being, with the moderate trade unions now keen to sit down at the negotiating table with a humbled French government.

We want an answer to unemployment that is French Florian, student In pictures: French protests

It seems that President Chirac's contorted climb-down last Friday, in a televised address watched by 20 million in France, has taken much of the fire out of the debate.

He rescinded the law in all but name and promised that his centre-right UMP party would sit down to negotiate with students and the unions as quickly as possible to improve the jobs law.

The French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, appears to have been largely sidelined in all this, his determination not to give in to the streets on this reform made impossible by President Chirac's decision

The man now in the driving seat in France appears to be the Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who on Tuesday night once again turned up to congratulate the riot police on a successful deployment.

'Missed opportunity'

Demonstrators handed out flyers calling for a general protest strike

He has emerged as the only winner so far in what many here - both on the left and right - see as a cautionary tale of French government ineptitude from start to finish.

Those who believe France needs reform to liberalise its rigid labour markets are bitterly disappointed over what they see as a missed opportunity.

Many French businesses say it is time that the French woke up to the realities of globalisation and harsh competition from abroad, rather than believing that the French state can protect them from it forever.

Yet others, especially among the trade unions, say they are prepared to listen and to talk about ways of reducing high youth job unemployment - but not have it imposed on them from above.

Most are expecting some kind of initial talks between the UMP and trade unions to get underway on Wednesday.