Mayhem has broken out across France, as a student-led protest has escalated into acts of arson and battery of police, leading the prime minister to call an emergency meeting with officials.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu convened the crisis meeting on Thursday following more than a week of protests by students in the Paris region. The demonstrations, which make demands such as more teachers and better-maintained school buildings, snowballed over the last several days to the point that public transportation is now compromised and widespread assaults are being reported.
“A high school set on fire, staff doused with gasoline, a toll of injuries that continues to grow: the acts of violence committed since this morning around high schools are of extreme gravity,” French Minister of Education Edouard Geffray said Thursday. “They far exceed the sole issue of the School. No demand can justify such acts.”
Geffray continued: “Those who commit these acts of violence must be prosecuted and sanctioned. Everyone must measure the responsibility of their words and their calls to mobilize.”
Lecornu gathered law enforcement officials and government ministers for the emergency meeting, instructing his minister to cancel planned trips until the crisis is sufficiently addressed.
Students in Nantes set fire to the local Nelson Mandela High School, while violent clashes and further arson attacks have been reported in Lille, Lyon, Rennes, and Toulouse.
Their complaints include inadequate staffing at schools, a lack of resources, crumbling infrastructure, and allegedly overpacked schedules. They claim the issue has become critical due to the forthcoming budget reforms of Lecornu’s government, which has warned of impending austerity measures meant to balance the national budget.
University students have joined the movement, as well as non-student outsiders. Protesters have been seen carrying signs calling for the Elysee Palace, the nation’s presidential office, to be burned down.
The left wing of French politics has backed the student riots, and a leaked intelligence report states that the government believes “the origins of this movement lie in an instrumentalization by student union structures and political movements close to the far left.”
France Unbowed, one of the country’s most left-wing parties, posted a “message to the government” on social media Thursday stating, “the youth has legitimate demands, you must listen to them!”
Saint-Denis mayor Bally Bagayoko, a member of France Unbowed, said of the protests that “violence can be legitimate,” while admitting that criminal activity should face consequences.
French President Emmanuel Macron referenced politicians’ influence on the riots while on a state visit to Spain Wednesday.
“I understand the anxieties, sometimes the anger that our young people can have,” Macron told journalists during the trip. “However, none of these fears, none of this debate, legitimizes violence. And in no case can those politically responsible (elected officials) – it’s a term that’s perhaps poorly chosen — legitimize violence. We’ve seen lots of politicians in front of schools drumming up students. I think that it’s serious.”
The French presidency is foremost an outward-facing, foreign policy position, but the issue of national security falls within its purview.
Manuel Bompard, a deputy of the French National Assembly who is also a member of France Unbowed, rebuked Macron by name for implying that his party was responsible for the chaos.
“No, Mr. Macron, [France Unbowed] has never called for violence. We defend a strategy of conscious, popular, and massive mobilization,” he said. “We support the demands of the youth, unlike you, because your policy bears responsibility for the situation it denounces.”
Geffray posted to social media later Thursday with a strikingly more conciliatory tone towards high school students’ complaints, announcing that he would receive representatives of staff, parents, high school students, and the National High School Life Council.
“With one goal: to turn these exchanges into concrete progress in service of the students, the staff, and the School,” he said.
The French government fears that the situation could escalate if disparate protests converge. Public sector workers are calling for a general strike due to the forthcoming budget proposal that would freeze their pay index.
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The High Council for the Public Finances, France’s independent fiscal watchdog agency, said Thursday in a review of the impending budget bill that “the deficit reduction target set for 2027 is a minimum given the alarming state of public finances.”
The budget crisis has become a defining issue of the upcoming French election, which the right-wing politician Marine Le Pen and her National Rally are currently on trajectory to win.