The Politics Of Protest; At bottom, Europe's problem is that its leaders know only how to say Non.

Byline: Denis MacShane

In May 1968, as a student, I crossed the channel to join the uprising in Paris. To borrow Wordsworth, bliss was it that spring to be young, and to be in Paris was very heaven. Then, we wanted to change the world. The unions organizing the great strikes and demonstrations alongside the students shared their radical agenda for change and modernization.

Today the politics of protest in France, as in Italy, is about resisting change. It seeks to uphold the status quo. And for Europe as a whole, that is a disaster. Two of the biggest founding states of the European project, France and Italy, are simply unable to deliver the political leadership, and the modern narrative, that would rescue them from the entrenched immobility of low growth and high unemployment. Whether it's a new EU constitution, changes in tax or labor laws, liberalizations of trade and services, even Turkish membership in the EU--anything that requires change or smacks of bona fide progress (especially if painful in the short run) gets smacked down. Europe's politicians--and its people--have grown so accustomed to saying no, they cannot remember how to say yes.

Example A is currently Dominique de Villepin, France's flamboyant and beleaguered prime minister. In 1968, the French economy was strong, the state sure of itself and society underdeveloped. In 2006, the economy is weak, the state uncertain and society prey to populism from right and left. Villepin is the perfect emblem of the new system. A pure representative of France's statist elite technocracy, he has never sought or won an election. He was President Jacques Chirac's chief of staff a decade ago when Prime Minister Alain JuppA[c] launched his own set of labor and welfare reforms aimed at dragging France a little closer to modernity. When JuppA[c]'s proposals produced a similar set of strikes and street demonstrations, Villepin advised Chirac to dissolve Parliament, hold fresh elections and get a clear mandate for reform. The result: the election of the Socialist government under Lionel Jospin--and further stasis. Yet rather than send Villepin back to the diplomatic world, where he had been a good press officer at the French Embassy in Washington, Chirac made him foreign minister and, last June, prime minister.

With his ambitions to succeed Chirac hinging on France's jobless rate, what has Villepin proposed? Instead of bold reform based on what works in Spain, Sweden or Britain (let alone the United States or Australia) he rammed through a mini-measure, a reformette, allowing employers to hire and fire (within two years) any worker up to age 26. Employers were unenthused. Unions rejected the plan. No young people were consulted. Instead of a normal parliamentary debate, or preparing the political ground beforehand, Villepin used extraordinary powers reserved for state emergencies to push through his decree. Hence the protests across France.

The left is hardly ...