 Two days later, Jean-Pierre Raffarin resigned and Chirac appointed Dominique de Villepin as Prime Minister of France.In an address to the nation, Chirac has declared that the new cabinet's top priority would be to curb the unemployment level, which consistently hovers above 10%, calling for a "national mobilization" to that effect.One of the main promises of Jean-Pierre Raffarin when he became Prime Minister had been to spur growth and that "the end of President Chirac's term would be marked by a drop in unemployment".