PARIS — What began three weeks ago as a teenage revolt over leaking roofs and missing teachers turned into one of France’s most turbulent days of unrest in years on Tuesday, as hundreds of thousands of students, parents and union workers took to the streets — and parts of the demonstrations slid into street fighting.
The Interior Ministry said 488 people were arrested and 43 members of the security forces were injured across France on Tuesday alone, with running battles in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Nantes. The ministry put nationwide turnout at 256,000; union organisers put it closer to 450,000. Either way, it was the biggest single day of the school protest wave that has swept France since mid-September.
President Emmanuel Macron called an emergency meeting Tuesday night with Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez and Education Minister Édouard Geffray as the crisis deepened. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu went further on Wednesday, suspending all high-school lessons through Friday so headteachers, teachers and pupils can hold what he called “internal democracy” talks about conditions inside the schools.
The complaints read like a catalogue of neglect: water-stained ceilings, classrooms without working toilets, rat infestations, classes of 32 to 35 pupils, teachers who never get replaced when they leave. Hugo Vetzel, a recent high-school graduate in Strasbourg who joined the marches, put it bluntly: “There is such a gap between the elites and us.”
The movement began in late September at lycées in Paris’s deprived suburbs, with students blocking school entrances and piling up rubbish bins. Within days it had spread nationwide; the High School Students Union said more than half of France’s lycées were blockaded or closed at least part of Tuesday. The Justice Ministry says more than 1,800 people — 1,483 of them minors — are now being prosecuted for offences connected to the protests.
The government’s response has two faces. Lecornu ordered his ministers to answer the students’ central demands: replacing absent teachers, reviewing the gruelling 8 a.m.–to–6 p.m. school day, and lengthening lunch breaks. At the same time, officials insist the movement has been hijacked by outsiders — in some places, they say, deteriorating into urban violence — while rights groups accuse police of using disproportionate force against minors.
Tuesday’s marches were mostly peaceful until they weren’t. In Paris, an AFP reporter described a largely calm procession until clashes broke out near its eastern endpoint at Place de la Nation, where police said some 300 hooded individuals confronted officers, hurling rocks as riot squads answered with tear gas. Several storefronts were damaged. Last Friday, a 15-year-old in Lens lost part of his hand when a police grenade exploded in it during a blockade — France’s police watchdog, the IGPN, has opened an inquiry.
The unrest is drawing the attention of world leaders. U.S. President Donald Trump blamed the turmoil on “mass migration” and Islam as he campaigned ahead of November’s midterm elections at home. Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador over what it called a “violent crackdown” and “widespread flagrant violations of human rights” — a statement that drew eye-rolls in Paris given Tehran’s own record.
Why this matters: France has seen student revolts before — in 1990, 2005, 2018 — but this one is different in one crucial respect. It is not a protest about a single reform; it is coming for the daily machinery of the French state. With a presidential election looming in 2027 and Macron unable to stand again, the way his government handles a movement of 15-to-17-year-olds — batons on one hand, negotiations on the other — will shape the succession fight and could redraw French education policy for a generation.
For now, the classrooms stay empty until Friday. The students say they will be back.
3 Comments