PARIS -- President Jacques Chirac on Monday scrapped a controversial part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions and dealing a blow to his loyal premier in a bid to end the crisis. Advertisement Unions celebrated what they called "a great victory," and also were deciding whether to keep up the protests. The top two student union UNEF and FIDL said they would press on with demonstrations Tuesday across France.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who devised the law, had faced down protesters for weeks, insisting that its most divisive provision -- a so-called "first job contract" -- was necessary to reduce high unemployment rates among French youths by making it easier for companies to hire and fire young worker

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This retraction of the labor law devised by Dominique de Villepin comes really as no surprise. You cannot take back handouts as easily as you give them out, a hard lesson the French government and the EU are learning.

While watching these protests from the relative peace of Philadelphia, I could not escape the similarities between Hugo's epic novel Les Miserables and these modern day student-protestors. The way the negotiations were going, I figured it would only be a few more days before the university students would break out in a chorus of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, while protesting in the streets of Paris. As with the novel and in real life, the ending is the same: The students lose everything, and life goes on.