On March 31, 2006 Law No. 2006-396 for equal opportunity, was published in the Official Journal of the French government thus promulgating the projet into law. Title I, Article 8 of this law provisions the contentious "contrat première embauche" or CPE.

The promulgation can be read here.

The CPE is law. Standing law. Law in force. With neither of Jack's promised amendments. And since these concessions failed to smooth down a public in favor of repeal, it is unlikely -- there being no political advantage -- that the amendments will ever be made.

Just as Europe did not cease to exist after last year's "constitutionl crisis", neither has France disappeared from the rolls of civilization following the CPE's passage into law.

The Jack pack has slipped the hook and the anti-CPE has lost its easy target. For all its noise and mischief the anti-CPE has failed to prevent the CPE from becoming law. It must now take its fight to the whole of the French Parliament for repeal. The Parliament, with members' stronger ties to their constituencies, is not the same unpopular target as the Jack pack. Politics being local, repeal will be a much harder nut to crack.

Our guess is that this mob is due to fade. It has built a national crisis on the sands of an innocuous labor law. And any mobiliztion that is relying on the political stamina and political vision of school children and college students, well, that is rather dreamy. Already with the harder fight for repeal ahead of them the anti-CPE demonstrations today look to be only a third of last Tuesday's turnout.

There is only so much energy in France for protest . And France looks to be spent.

UPDATE 04.05.06 N°1: The Guardian is reporting organizers' claims of three million protestors.

Trade unionists and student leaders said up to three million people took to the streets across France yesterday - the second time in eight days that the country has seen its biggest street demonstrations in almost 40 years. ... They were marked by a carnival atmosphere somewhere between a victory parade for the demonstrators and a funeral march for the "first employment law" as the ruling party prepared to begin negotiating its way out of the crisis.

Police fought running battles with rioters in central Paris last night as youths attacked officers with bangers, bottles and concrete at the end of a mass demonstration against a youth employment law that has caused a political crisis for Jacques Chirac's ruling party.

And here is a curious detail:

Because the amended law will not come into operation until May, this allows a window in which trade unionists insist the law must be shelved and rewritten.

We were unaware that a French president had the power to rescind standing law on his own.

The Telegraph gives a more circumspect tally:

At least a million demonstrators took to the streets for a fifth day of protest... Violence flared again last night in Paris, where organisers claimed 700,000 people were on the march. Police put the figure at 80,000 and official estimates of those protesting nationally were well below the three million claimed.

UPDATE 04.05.06 N°2: Le Monde reports significant drop-offs yesterday in strike participation:

In national education, the ministry figures of between 16.14% and 28.42% of striking workers are 10 points less than on March 28. For the SNCF, the percentage of strikers was 18.3% compared to 27.7% on March 28.

UPDATE 04.05.06 N°3:

STRIKES DISRUPT COMMUTE - BUT LESS THAN LAST WEEK

PARIS April 4, 2006 (AFP) - Commuters in France faced disruption Tuesday as transport unions went on strike to protest the government's contested youth employment plan, but the networks appeared less chaotic than a week ago.

UPDATE 04.05.06 N°4: The BBC further deflates the puffed-up anti-CPE, opting to report the police turn-out figure of a million but not the unions claim of three millions.

Some of the fire seems to have gone out of the demonstrations, though, and even the skirmishes between the waiting riot police and hooded youths at the end of the march at Place d'Italie seemed desultory, as though even the trouble-makers' hearts were not quite in it any more.

Some trade unionists admitted privately that this would probably be the last major nationwide show of union muscle for the time being, with the moderate trade unions now keen to sit down at the negotiating table with a humbled French government.

PFFT (What is this?): Sound and fury 3 | Rayonnement français 0