Key Takeaways
- Students, teachers, and parents marched in cities across France.
- Protests demand government action on understaffed and dilapidated classrooms.
- Prime Minister Lecornu promises to address key demands but faces budget constraints.
Students, teachers, and parents marched in cities across France on Tuesday, with the largest demonstration expected in Paris in the afternoon. The protests, part of a wave of demonstrations, come after a fortnight of actions that began in Paris’s deprived suburbs before spreading across the country.
In Marseille, Nantes, and Lyon, the protests began peacefully mid-morning. Young protesters held smoke flares and placards reading 'Under our school books, anger' and 'Where are the politicians? Do they even know we exist?'.
The government responded with riot police, who clashed with protesters in northern France. A 15-year-old student lost his hand and part of his lower arm after picking up a police dispersal grenade, according to the regional newspaper La Voix du Nord.
The High School Students Union reported that 1,800 high schools were blockaded or would close for the day. Some local education authorities attempted to move classes online, but the education ministry did not immediately provide numbers.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has ordered his ministers to address the students' leading demands, including ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the school day length, and addressing the need for longer lunch breaks. He also promised to look at repairs needed for ageing school buildings.
Finding spare cash will be difficult, as the protests have piled pressure on a government trying to narrow a ballooning budget deficit. Investor concerns about France’s growing debt pile, weak growth, and reluctance to rein in spending have pushed bond yields higher. The yield on France’s 10-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over 5% last week.
The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policymakers. Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.
Marine Le Pen, the far-right euro-skeptic populist leading the presidential race ahead of next spring’s election, set out plans to slash public spending if elected, seeking to establish her fiscal credibility as the bond market crisis deepens.
France’s interior ministry reported that 6,100 people have been arrested since the protests began, the overwhelming majority of them minors. More than 1,800 arrests were made in Paris alone.
