The minister of culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, whose acronym changed from RDDV to RDDVV, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres de Vivendi or Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres et Vivendi in the evening of march 15th after having voted the Amendement Vivendi Universal, had thought it all through: Urgence declared in december, suspending the debate for 10 weeks after the Assemblée Nationale had voted an amendment against the government, maintaining the urgence to avoid a second lecture in the Assemblée Nationale, even though it is hard to understand how a debate about a law, considered urgent enough to make the parliament work on 22nd december and urgent enough to avoid any kind of public discussion, can be suspended for 10 weeks and then still be said to be urgent.

To understand why all this made sense and was probably part of a major plan, you need to know that the french employment market was reformed in january, february and march 2006 in a very special way. The government proposed a new law, which, among other things, introduced the "CPE = Contract Première Embauche" = "Contract of First Employment", which removed any kind of protection against dismissal for a period of two years after having signed one's first contract of employment. This applied to people not older than 25 years.

In order to make this law pass without serious discussion in the Assemblée Nationale, the government used the famous "49/3" of the french constitution, allowing the government to consider a law voted without actually having to vote. Once the prime minister, who has to announce the usage of this article personally, has announced it, the Assemblée Nationale cannot continue the debate. This article was made in 1958 to give a government the possibility to pass a law against a parliament being running amok.

When the government uses the 49/3 this way, the Assemblée Nationale only has one possibility to reject the law: submitting a "motion de censure". When the majority of the members (289) votes this motion de censure, the law (together with the prime minister) is thrown away. In this special case, no votes "against" are possible, and members not being present or not voting for other reasons are considered supporting the government. Thus, no matter how many members are present or how many want to vote, the majority of the members must vote for the "motion de censure" for it to be considered accepted.

The result of this reform were incredible riots for several weeks, until the prime minister accepted to abrogate this CPE. Of course, this happened only after DADVSI v2.0 was passed in the Assemblée Nationale. The french media barely reported about DADVSI, as there were far more important subjects, especially the CPE and the demonstrations against it. Now, you probably understand why Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres et Vivendi suspended the debate for 10 weeks despite of the pretended urgence: Once again he tried to hide the debate about DADVSI, this time not behind Christmas, but behind really big events.

With the CPE abrogated, the streets are now free for other demonstrations. As announced on framasoft, there will be a demonstration against DADVSI on 7th may: "NO to law about copyright, NO to death of private copy, NO to DRM, NO to death of french free software, YES to diversity of music, YES to interoperability" will be the slogan.

French people are known to defend themselves against politicians when necessary, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres (et Vivendi) should have known better than this.