More street demonstrations against unemployment are taking place in Paris and other cities in France, coinciding with the opening of a parliamentary debate on government plans to cut the working week to 35 hours.

Jospin: believes the 35-hour week will create 700,000 jobs

This proposal, a promise made by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in his election campaign, is fiercely opposed by French employers who say their costs will rise.

France is becoming a testing ground in a debate about whether the controversial 35-hour week will prove to be the saviour of the economies of Europe - or their ruin.

In France, the unemployed have become a powerful political force.

They blame the figure of more than 3m jobless on austerity policies, as the government tries to meet the criteria for joining the new European single currency next year.

A series of marches has drawn attention and support for their cause while the French National Assembly begins its six-day debate on the new proposals.

Cutting the working week is an idea spawned by the Left. Its advocates claim it would lead to lower unemployment, by sharing out the available work among 700,000 more people.

The government maintains it believes this theory.

In a recent French study of the issue commissioned by the government, it was suggested that cutting the working week could lead to the creation of perhaps three-quarters of a million new jobs by the year 2000.

But hard-headed political observers in Paris are far from convinced by the evidence of the economic studies.

They suggest that if employers do not collaborate, the resulting conflict would lead to a decline rather than an increase in jobs.

France's employers say they will resist the 35-hour week, because they believe it will ruin their efforts to win competitive edge and stay in business.

The standoff between government and business is itself a poor omen. And an article in the conservative newspaper 'Le Figaro', spells out the reasons why the 'Patronat', the French employers, are so incensed.

Headlined '35 Hours: a wrong, good idea', its author, Antoine-Pierre Mariano, writes:

"In opposition, the Socialists produced a catch-all electoral programme, in which they wrote that, by cutting the working week to 35 hours, more jobs would be created. Angry with the economic cuts, French people believed them. The Socialists are now too committed to go back on their stance. They have now been taken hostage by their allies, the communists and the Greens. That is how, by applying a wrong, good idea, France is going to commit a historic blunder."

Lionel Jospin is hoping his policies will bring both economic success and electoral popularity.

The recent occupations of public offices by groups of unemployed people show how the government has begun to lose the support of those it claims to be helping.

Without good relations with the country's employers, it is hard to see Mr Jospin making a success of the French economy.
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