Protestsupdated 1h ago3 min read
French Students Return to Streets After Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu Promises School Measures
About 400 high schools closed nationwide amid protests and detentions around 2,000. More than 250,000 protesters nationwide, including 56,000 in Paris.
11 outlets told this the same way.
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Street protests widen
French students kept returning to the streets as high school and university students across France launched a fourth straight day of nationwide action on Thursday after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu promised measures to improve conditions in schools but stopped short of announcing immediate changes. The Education Ministry said the number of schools disrupted by the protests fell by around 30 percent on Thursday compared to the day before, and it said of France's 3,700 secondary schools, 224 remained completely closed and 151 were partially open. Lecornu told the public in a televised address on Wednesday evening that France could not remain “indifferent” to the concerns being raised by high school students, and he acknowledged that “the anger of young people does not come from nowhere”.
Lecornu said the government's first decisions in response to students' demands would be presented at the end of October, and he announced five longer-term areas of work including replacing absent teachers, improving conditions in schools, reorganising school hours and making higher education admissions platform Parcoursup more transparent. The protests also kept spreading as students were called to block schools and university campuses and join demonstrations across France, with several education unions backing Thursday's mobilisation with strike action.
Police scrutiny and injuries
The protests’ police response came under growing scrutiny as rights groups, trade unions and student organisations accused authorities of using disproportionate force during demonstrations and school blockades. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told RTL radio on Wednesday that stun grenades would be suspended while the circumstances surrounding the incident were investigated, and he stressed that the measure applied only to protests involving high school students and would remain in place for “just long enough to understand what happened”. RFI said the unrest left 215 students, 88 education staff and 761 police officers and gendarmes injured since the protests began, and it said more than 6,600 people had been arrested.
The government also said most of the student injuries resulted from “reckless behaviour”, including the use of fireworks around schools, while Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure called for an end to the use of rubber bullet launchers and sting-ball grenades. Ainoha Pascual, who represents three minors in Paris, said minors taken into police custody had been “terrorised” and alleged that many young detainees arrived in custody with injuries caused by baton blows or after being dragged along the ground.
Fiscal pressure and political stakes
The protests unfolded alongside a fiscal crisis narrative as CNN said France’s unprecedented wave of student protests laid bare the country’s growing financial pressures and would become more difficult to tackle as Europe’s second-largest economy tried to rein in a ballooning budget deficit. CNN reported that public debt was more than $4 trillion in June, exceeding the size of the economy, and it said the spread between French and German bond yields expanded to its widest level since 2012. CNN quoted Angel Talavera, chief European economist at Oxford Economics, saying, “the potential for contagion into other countries and the Eurozone at large is very large and could potentially cause a serious crisis for the entire region,” while it also said the euro was worth around $1.12 after weakening.
The New York Times framed the unrest as rooted in France’s struggles to fund its social welfare state, with teachers and other public workers rallying against proposed wage freezes as the government labored to pass a budget. The New York Times said the student protests had become the most vivid manifestation of France’s unrest and grievances, with hundreds of schools closed, dozens damaged, and many people arrested or injured.