PARIS, April 10: French President Jacques Chirac scrapped his government’s hotly contested youth jobs scheme on Monday, handing a major victory to unions and students after one of the country’s biggest political crises in decades.

Chirac announced after a high-level meeting that the youth contract, which would have made it easier to fire young workers, would be “replaced” with new measures to help disadvantaged young people into work.

It was hailed as a major victory by French union leaders, who had mobilised millions of people in a sometimes violent two-month street campaign against a measure they said only increased job insecurity.

The decision is a serious blow to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who had championed the scheme as a cornerstone of efforts to fight unemployment.

Villepin — whose approval ratings are at an all-time low, his chances for next year’s presidential election all but destroyed — confirmed the decision in a brief televised address.

“The necessary conditions of trust and serenity were not present, either among young people or businesses, to allow the implementation of the First Employment Contract (CPE),” Villepin said.

He had wanted to “act fast” against youth unemployment, which runs at 22 percent in France, he said, and regretted that his reform “was not understood by everyone”.

Union leaders and student groups — who had set the government a deadline of April 17 to withdraw the CPE — hailed the decision as a “genuine success”.

Bernard Thibault, the head of France’s biggest union the CGT, proclaimed Chirac’s decision a “victory against precarity”, while student leader Bruno Juillard said it marked “a decisive victory”.

Another student leader called, however, for an end to blockades that continued to disrupt almost half of France’s 84 universities.

But the unions warned that they would remain vigilant until parliament adopts the legislation superseding the CPE and gave their backing to a day of student action planned for Tuesday.

Villepin’s CPE would have allowed employers to fire workers aged under 26 without reason during their first two years of employment, in a bid to coax employers into creating jobs for unqualified young staff.—AFP