French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has vowed not to back down on his contested youth jobs plan, despite violent protests yesterday and today’s threat by union leaders to call a general strike.
Mr Villepin called for his controversial First Employment Contract (CPE) to be given 'a chance', while adding that he 'regretted' it was misunderstood.
Meanwhile, union and student leaders have given the prime minister until tomorrow afternoon to withdraw the CPE.
Hundreds of thousands of opponents took to the streets of Paris and other cities to demonstrate yesterday.
The march through the French capital ended in several hours of confrontations between riot police and masked gangs, who hurled projectiles, set cars alight and smashed shop windows and telephone booths.
Police fired tear gas and made baton charges to disperse demonstrators at the Place de la Nation in the east of the city, and later in the Latin Quarter used water cannon to break up protesters trying to pull down a metal barrier blocking access to the historic Sorbonne university.
167 arrests were made in the clashes, which were the worst since tensions over the youth jobs contract erupted two weeks ago.
A total of 34 police officers and 18 demonstrators were injured, though none seriously.
An open-ended contract for under 26-year-olds that can be terminated without justification in the first two years, the CPE is meant to bring down France's chronically high youth unemployment rate by offering employers greater flexibility.
President Jacques Chirac has urged the two sides to open talks, but an increasingly buoyant opposition says that abandonment of the CPE is a precondition for negotiations.
A new opinion survey to be published tomorrow says 60% of French people want the CPE to be withdrawn, but 63% believe the prime minister will stick by it.
