Economist.com Cities Guide: Paris Briefing - April 2006

News this month

Aux barricades

A wave of student-led protests against labour reform for young people continues to rock France. At issue is a contrat première embauche (CPE), or first job contract for those aged under 26, proposed by Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister. The contract is intended to boost employment by encouraging employers to create new jobs for young people. In return they can shed these workers without justification, though with notice and some compensation, during their first two years. Critics complain that this will hurt job security for a workforce that is already battling unemployment, and hundreds of thousands of young people across France have taken to the streets in protest.

After four major demonstrations in late February and March, one of which drew up to 1.5m demonstrators nationwide, unions joined with students on March 28th in a general strike. Traffic in Paris slowed to a crawl, and tens of thousands of people again marched against the CPE. Students have been reprising roles from “les évènements” of 1968 by occupying the Sorbonne and other universities. Several stand-offs and marches have turned violent as some youths skirmished with police, burnt cars and vandalised shops, harking back to the riots in the Paris suburbs last autumn. Hundreds have been arrested, and several dozen students and police officers injured. In the midst of this chaos is Mr de Villepin, who, having promised not to budge, is hinting that he may compromise. A poll taken on March 27th showed that 63% were opposed to the CPE.

School's out

Among the many disruptions caused by recent student protests has been the forced closure of university buildings and the interruption of classes. By late March, weeks after the first protests, the education ministry announced that students had blockaded 14 of 84 universities and disturbed operations at 42 others. Leaders of the National Student Union (UNEF), which has organised the protests, say that 69 universities are “on strike”. Nearly 1,000 high schools—nearly a quarter nationwide—are also affected.

Earlier in the month in Paris, the prestigious Sorbonne University, Collège de France and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales were temporarily occupied by protesters before riot police dislodged them. The elite Ecole Normale Supérieure has been forced to shut its doors to all but card-carrying students, and some classes have been moved to buildings in the suburbs. Gilles de Robien, the education minister, has denounced the blockades as “unacceptable”—censure that has done little to dissuade students. But some now worry that the campus shutdowns could force end-of-year exams to be held later than usual.

Egg toss

Françoise de Panafieu is the centre-right UMP party’s candidate for Paris’s 2008 mayoral election. Her campaign began inauspiciously on March 16th when she made the rounds of a block of council flats in the poor 19th arrondissement. Jacques Deroo, a 50-year-old anti-poverty activist and local resident, threw an egg at her head, hitting her in the left eye.
Mr Deroo, who has planned public stunts in the past to spread his anti-poverty message, had tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting with Ms Panafieu on March 2nd at UMP headquarters. Failing that, he chose a more direct mode of confrontation. He explained that he targeted Ms Panafieu—who represents the smart 17th arrondissement—to protest against her “provocative” decision to venture into the public housing complex. “She gave the impression of going to visit destitution like one would visit the zoo”, he carped. Mr Deroo will appear in court on May 17th to face charges of having exerted “violence with a weapon—more specifically, an egg”.

Grand plans

The Grand Palais, the steel-and-glass exhibition hall built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, reopened in September 2005 after a 12-year renovation. Now that the spectacular hall is finally ready, its use has become the subject of debate. According to an inscription chiselled into the hall’s pediment, the Grand Palais should be “dedicated to the glory of French art”. It was the site of Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel haute couture show in January and the annual Art Paris modern-art fair in March, but it has also played host recently to a fun fair and a television show—eliciting snorts of horror from art-snobs. Patrick Bouchain, an architect, has proposed using the space for everything from sports events to concerts, fashion shows and temporary exhibits. His is the 18th proposal in two decades for the Grand Palais.

While various parties bicker over what should take place inside the hall, officials insist that there is still more work to be done on the building itself. The recent €101m ($122m) renovation helped restore the soaring dome—parts of which occasionally used to come crashing down—and strengthen its foundations. But according to the culture ministry, it would take €120m more to fix other major problems. The building continues to suffer from terrible acoustics and a lack of access from the nave to the building’s museum wings, and the huge glass ceiling creates suffocating heat in summer and a deep freeze in winter.

Street-walkers take to the street

The first-ever Prostitute Pride March brought some 100 sex workers into the streets on March 18th to call for formal recognition of their métier. Transvestites, dominatrices and other members of the world’s oldest profession cut a line through the heart of the city's sex trade zones, from the racy Place de Pigalle near Montmartre down rue St-Denis to the Pompidou Centre.

The march was staged largely to object to recent measures introduced by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s interior minister, to criminalise prostitution further. In 2003 Mr Sarkozy made soliciting sex punishable by a two-month prison sentence and a €3,750 fine. Demonstrators criticised this move, which keeps their work illicit, even as they pay taxes like other hard-working citizens. Some argued that selling sex had become more dangerous, as fewer prostitutes contact the police to report abuse. The marchers chanted, “We’re hookers and we’re proud, Sarkozy—it’s war.” ACT-UP, an AIDS activist group, joined in with an even more jarring (and probably less productive) slogan: “Prostitutes, Sarkozy wants you dead”.

Catch if you can

April 2006

Pierre Bonnard

February 2nd-May 7th 2006

The Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris reopens this month after a two-year renovation, with its first major exhibition dedicated to Pierre Bonnard. A master of radiant and expressive colour, Bonnard was long dismissed by critics as too pretty a painter. But his retrospective at the Pompidou in 1984, and now this show of 90 oil paintings, have worked to resurrect his role as a pivotal modernist influence, an important bridge between post-Impressionism and abstractionism.

The exhibition’s thematic layout, with female nudes, landscapes and still-lives grouped together, seems heavy-handed, but it does give a chance to compare works from different decades. Much remains constant over some 40-odd years, such as Bonnard's reliance on colour, not line, to define objects and moods, and his use of light and reflection. He also painted the same model in nearly 400 works, his wife and muse Marthe.

Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 11 avenue du Président-Wilson, 16th arrondissement. Tel: +33 (0)1 53 67 40 00. Open: Tues-Sun 10am-6pm (Weds till 10pm). Métro: Iéna. For more information visit the museum's website (in French).

More from the Paris cultural calendar