Jospin stands firm against jobs protest

The beleaguered French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, made modest concessions last night to the unemployed protest movement which has shaken his coalition government. But he risked further unrest by rejecting their calls for immediate, large increases in social benefits. John Lichfield reports from Paris.

Mr Jospin's combative appearance on television last night may go down as the pivotal moment of his premiership.

Earlier this week, he had been expected - based on leaks from his own office - to make substantial new concessions to the protest movement for the long-term unemployed which has split his pink, red and green coalition.

But the Socialist Prime Minister decided, over dinner with senior ministers on Monday night, to tough out the protests and to call the bluff of his Communist and Green coalition partners.

In a lengthy appearance on the most popular television news programme last night, he made five new commitments to help the jobless, including an unspecified increase - possibly by the spring - in the pounds 55-a-week minimum paid to the long-term unemployed.

But Mr Jospin rebuffed the protesters', core demands - supported publicly by the Communists and Greens - for large increases, across the board in all minimum, social payments to the jobless, the old, the young, one parent families and the disabled.

Such increases, he said, would cost at least pounds 6bn a year and destroy his government's strategy to hold down public spending, boost growth and qualify the franc to join the single European currency. "I want a society of work, not a society of assistance," he declared.

These words, which might have been spoken by a centre-right French politician (or by Tony Blair), were a direct warning to the left-wing elements in his coalition to stop making unrealistic demands for increased public spending.

He also appealed to the French people, who have overwhelmingly supported the unemployment protests, to give him time to complete the job he was elected to do seven months ago. Only the French people as a whole, he said, had a legitimate right to alter political policy not a "small section or fringe".

It was a well-judged and forceful performance by Mr Jospin, expressing sympathy for the distress of the unemployed, "for whom I have struggled all my life", while obliquely casting doubt on the motives and tactics of the protest leaders. The Prime Minister is unlikely to have satisfied the protesters themselves but he may have done enough to shift public opinion to his side and hold his coalition together.

Mr Jospin's tougher line is partly based on the results of focus groups and opinion polls, which suggest that the 70 per cent public support for the movement is sentimental and skin-deep, rather than strongly rooted, as more evidence emerges of the far-left connections of the organisers.