As expected. “De Villepin Vows Curfews, More Police to End Riots,” from Bloomberg, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
In a bid to help cool tensions, de Villepin proposed boosting spending on training and education programs in poor neighborhoods and called for the country to step up its fight against discrimination of minorities….
De Villepin’s call for increased spending on training programs comes amid rising unemployment among immigrants. Last year, 17.4 percent of immigrants were unemployed, compared with 9.2 percent for non-immigrants, says Insee, the Paris-based government statistics office. For the same education level, immigrants are more likely to be unemployed, it said.
“Youth unemployment reaches almost 40 percent in some areas,” de Villepin said. He added that the goal of the government will be to give unemployed youth living in France’s “sensitive urban areas” a work contract, an internship or training in coming months.
De Villepin also said he will restore government subsidies to local associations scrapped by his predecessor and aims to triple scholarships and improve links between universities and students living in poor areas.
The prime minister said in the interview that students must be able to join vocational training programs at the age of 14 instead of 16. Almost 150,000 students drop out of school without a diploma or a skill each year, according to the prime minister.
De Villepin also called for businesses and the population as a whole to fight ethnic discrimination. The government wants to make sure that the riots aren’t used by “radical Islam,” which is not the “main” concern at the moment, he said.
Thus exacerbating some of the causes of the riots in the first place.