PARIS — French teenagers clashed with police on Tuesda as they blocked the entrances to schools demanding better conditions,while civil servants went on strike in a show of discontent with planned budget cuts ahead of next year’s presidential election.
The actions came as unions planned a day of nationwide demonstrations and also strikes over the budget of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron.
Seven months before the election, and just two days before the government unveils its 2027 budget draft, opinion polls consistently show the deep unpopularity of France’s center-right government.
High school students have staged protests outside their schools since last week over grievances including timetables, class sizes and a shortage of teachers as well as overheated classrooms in the wake of the recent heatwaves.
The movement in the lycées, which handle the final years of school in France, started in the Ile-de-France region around Paris, where blockades in some 10 schools were reported by education authorities on Tuesday.
It has now spread to other cities nationwide.
Masked students gathered outside the Lycée Cesar Baggio in Lille, in northern France, setting bins on fire, an AFP photographer reported.
Bus shelters and advertising billboards were vandalised, with bottles, paving stones and various objects hurled at police who responded by firing tear gas.
Teens piled up dozens of bins to prevent entrance to the Lycée Gabriel Guist’hau in the western city of Nantes, while in Paris there was an uneasy standoff between 30 students and a contingent of police at the Arago school.
Similar actions were also reported in cities including Marseille in the south, Bordeaux in the west and Lyon in the southeast.
At the Lamartine school in Paris, around 80 students gathered outside brandishing slogans including “more hours of lessons than sleep” and “8:00 am to 6:00 pm, are we pupils or under arrest?”
A placard reading “Macron explosion” was displayed in front of the entrance of the Arago school in Paris, where students, some with their faces covered, sat and stood on dumpsters to block the entrance. A large banner in front of the Helene-Boucher school said “Fewer cops, More money”.
“We want fewer police because we think there is a huge amount of police repression, both against high school student movements and social movements more generally,” said Mael Breton, a final-year student at the Helene-Boucher school.
“We believe this is a real problem, especially when there is such a lack of funding … here at our school and in the national education system more broadly.”
There were tense scenes at the Lycée Brequigny in the northwestern city of Rennes, Brittany’s largest high school, where around a hundred students hurled projectiles at the building, an AFP video journalist said.
Tens of thousands were expected to rally in Paris and other cities, with teachers and fire services striking nationwide, although public transport was not badly affected.
There were no official figures yet on how many teachers and other civil servants were on strike. Limited disruption was reported on public transport in the morning. Healthcare workers were expected to join 170 rallies across the country later.
“The anger is immense. I warn the government, it must address the demands and revise the draft budget, which is dangerous for the country and is driving us straight into the wall of recession at 200 kilometres an hour,” the head of the hardline CGT union Sophie Binet told BFM TV.
A 17-year-old pupil at the Lamartine school, who asked not to be named, said they had been angered by a lack of resources, overheated classrooms and overly congested timetables.
“We are also there to support our teachers who have a crazy amount of work compared to what they earn,” she told AFP.
Lecornu on Monday said any escalation of demonstrations at high schools would be “irresponsible” and lashed out at the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party for encouraging the protests.
“Fireworks, fires, violence near high schools: Nothing justifies endangering students, staff, or police officers,” he said on X.
However, he acknowledged that the “difficulties of high schools must be heard and addressed”.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 164 arrests took place on Monday and 180 schools were affected, adding: “We cannot tolerate excesses.”
In the low-income Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, the district’s LFI mayor Bally Bagayoko joined a protest of hundreds of students at the Lycée Paul-Eluard.
Leading students in a rendition of the Marseillaise, he described the protests as “completely legitimate” and complained low income areas received fewer resources than higher-income ones.
Source: Saudi Gazette