First Employment Contract - Official Response

Official Response

On March 21, the Prime Minister was refusing to change tack, saying that "with this law, there are three things which are impossible. The first is its withdrawal, because that would mean that we are surrendering to the logic of ultimatums and prerequisites. This is obviously what our electorate does not want, and they would not forgive us for it. The second is its suspension, quite simply because that is against our Constitution. And the third is reworking the bill, because to lose its balance would be to deprive it of any chance for success."

On March 30, the Constitutional Council, the highest constitutional authority, validated most of the law, along with its 8th article instituting the First Employment Contract. The law was considered to abide by the Constitution of France; the Constitutional Council didn't pronounce on the question of conformity to international and european law, which it is not empowered to consider. The sixty Socialist deputies and sixty Socialist senators who had deposed the legal recourse before the Constitutional Council notably claimed that the law was against article 24 of the European social charter, which states that the employer must give a juridical motive before firing an employee, and against the International Labour Convention (n°158). Labor courts will have to create the jurisprudence concerning this point.

On the evening of March 31, President Chirac announced in an address to the nation that he would promulgate the law, but asked the government at the same time to prepare a new law including two modifications: the trial period would be reduced to one year, and employers would now have to give a reason for the dismissal of the employment. However, Chirac did not specify whether this reason would be a juridical motive or a simple letter without any juridical value. He also asked employers not to start using the contract until these modifications came into force, but suggested no means of enforcement. Chirac's paradoxical call (officially promulgating the law while unofficially asking at the same time for its suspension) has only baffled both partisans and opponents of the text. The president's move was widely analyzed by the press as support for his prime minister Dominique de Villepin against its contender for the 2007 election Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the leader of Chirac's political party, the UMP. Villepin had declared that he would have resigned had Chirac refused to promulgate the law. Some 2000 students were waiting on the Place de la Bastille for Chirac's address to the nation. After hearing it, they carried out a night demonstration, which collected as many as 6000 persons between the Hôtel de Ville and the Opéra. A few hundred demonstrators didn't quit until four in the morning.