POLICE clashed with rioters in the centre of Paris last night during student protests against a youth employment law that has provoked a trial of strength with the Government of Dominique de Villepin.

Protesters set a kiosk and several cars ablaze in the Latin Quarter and threw petrol bombs at riot police. They retaliated with tear gas and water cannon. Police said that 35 officers were injured, and 181 protesters were arrested in Paris alone.

The violence flared at the end of a day of protest against the hastily passed law that has united trade unions, the left-wing opposition and public opinion. From Marseilles in the south to Lille in the north, students staged protests in streets, universities and lycées.

In Paris, in scenes that conjured up images of the demonstrations of 1968, 2,000 riot police stood guard as about 30,000 students were joined by unionists in a march in the cold sunshine from la Place d’Italie through the Left Bank close to the ministerial district. “Villepin, you’re toast, the students are in the streets!” they chanted.

The march took on a festive air as students vented their wrath over what they saw as establishment contempt for their future. Several hundred teenagers broke off and disrupted traffic on the Right Bank, banging drums in the Place de l’Opéra.

But later groups of masked protesters attacked police and smashed shop windows. Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, said that the troublemakers were not students, but youths from housing estates, and anarchists.

About 500 had been targeted through police intelligence, said M Sarkozy, who ordered officers to avoid violence of the type that broke out around the Paris Sorbonne University on Monday. Nevertheless the focus of last night’s riots was also the Sorbonne.

M de Villepin, who has staked his political future on the law, refused to back down, and President Chirac has supported the Prime Minister whom he appointed last May. M de Villepin called for dialogue but said: “I will do it to the end because I believe in this measure.”

However, Cabinet colleagues have privately faulted the Prime Minister for mishandling the jobs scheme. His fate will depend on his weathering further protests on Saturday and next week, commentators say.

The trigger for this latest of France’s long history of showdowns between “the street” and the Government is an attempt by M de Villepin to lower the demoralising youth unemployment rate, which has hovered above 20 per cent for nearly a generation.

The scheme for so-called “first job contracts” is designed to encourage employers to hire by exempting them for two years from France’s burdensome job-protection rules.

It was devised to tackle the frustration that prompted last autumn’s riots on poor estates but has backfired because it has been depicted by activists and the opposition as a ploy to exploit the young by depriving them of the job protection enjoyed by their elders.

The protest has gained momentum thanks to public sympathy and media coverage that has amplified the anti- government argument.

While about half the country’s universities and a third of schools in Paris were closed or suffering heavy disruption, disputes broke out between striking students and those who wanted to continue their studies for summer exams. Toulouse University closed its doors after clashes between protesting students and those who wanted to keep it open.

Politicians and commentators favourable to the jobs law believe that M de Villepin was ill-advised to announce the scheme without consulting unions or employers, and rushing it through parliament.

“The real guilty figure in this affair is Dominique de Villepin,” L’Express, a pro-business news magazine, said yesterday. “The Prime Minister has pulled off a tour de force, transforming a technical measure into a national drama.”

Opinion was divided on whether M de Villepin would survive as Prime Minister if M Chirac felt it necessary to intervene and order the law to be amended or scrapped.

Roland Cayroll, the director of the CSA polling institute, said that M de Villepin had provided a godsend to the opposition, and had boxed himself into a near-impossible position from which “he can only count on himself and the troops which will follow him”.

PROTEST POWER

1968 Student protests against university reform turn into riots and general strike that almost bring down President de Gaulle

1986 Student strike against selection for university entrants. Jacques Chirac, the Prime Minister, withdraws reform

1991 Education Minister Lionel Jospin withdraws university reforms after student demonstrations

1995 Strikes against attempt to reform social security and pensions. Alain Juppé, the Prime Minister, backs down

2003 Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s Government resists mass protests against pension reform

In Spain, drinkers as young as 12 are joining an outdoor bender

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