I saw on the news last nice that France is in civil turmoil but, the evening news being the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version that it is, didn’t really go into any details. What is going on?
There are large student-led protests across the country, some turning violent with many injuries, some serious. It looks like the protests are centered on high schools, but there has been spillover to areas around schools.
Here’s a Reuters article that covers the basics.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-braces-day-school-blockades-street-protests-2026-10-06/
Interesting. Even Reuters is not brimming with details about the causes of the protests, which seem to center on the quality of, and facilities for, high school education, especially in poorer neighborhoods. And the background is political, with claims (denied by them) that the hard left are stoking the protests. Centrism seems to be falling on its face in France.
The current protests were driven mainly by anger over the condition of France’s public schools. High-school students began protesting in mid-September, and teachers, parents and labor unions have joined them. The first one was on September 17 in Créteil, outside Paris, when students supported teachers demanding more staff and resources. It spread through social media, with students elsewhere reporting overcrowded classrooms, canceled lessons and outdated facilities. It dovetailed with wider public frustration over poverty, inequality and pressure on public spending.
More photos here: Photos: School blockades, street protests grip France | Protests News | Al Jazeera
Government response: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20261007-what-france-s-student-protesters-want-–-and-what-the-government-is-offering
Detailed feed: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20261008-live-students-fourth-round-protests-education-funding-france
About 200 injuries, a few major ones (grenades ripping off hands, shattering jaws and teeth, etc.). Government has promised to stop using stun grenades, pause the normal school curriculum for a few days to give students space to air grievances (if they’re not out protesting, I guess), and opened some avenues for feedback. Major policy discussions & decisions deferred until the end of October.
To be fair, the answer to “Protests & Violence: What’s Going on in France?” is “an average Wednesday”. The French have traditionally taken their protests very seriously indeed. But yeah, the current ones are about schools and stoked by police overreaction, political partisanship and general civil inequality.
The mayor of Paris suburb Saint Denis, Bally Bagayoko, was caught in the middle of one of the clashes where he tried to defend a group of students from the police and ended up getting teargassed.
“Um … guys? … you just teargassed our mayor.”
How embarrassing is that?!
Bear in mind that the French police is national, not municipal or regional, so they weren’t actually teargassing their boss.
Ah, I didn’t realize that! Still, if anyone asked me, I’d deny being on crowd control duty that day at that location. LOL
The issue at hand is a serious, structural one - France is in a bad financial situation. The country is getting more and more into debt, and it is becoming harder and harder to actually balance the books. There is a serious deficit, and something has to give.
The trigger for all this was the government announcing that (among other cuts) they were cutting € 40 billion in education. As you can imagine this was not exactly welcome news for students who, very often, have to study in overcrowded classrooms and in schools that do not have many resources to begin with.
This said, there have been some cases of protestors burning down some high schools. I can’t help but wonder how on earth that can help the situation, but there you are.
Also, I have the horrendous premonition that all this will become votes for the FN in the next elections (I can’t help but compare this to the May of 1968 protests against De Gaulle, and how in the end De Gaulle got a big victory in the next elections). And well… the Front National has said that they want to slash € 150 billion from the budget. If they get into power … the students will see (1) what really savage cuts are like, and (2) how a completely unchained riot police is like.
Oh, Lord, how horrible!