France’s protests expose a deeper crisis of public trust. Political paralysis risks turning a generation’s grievances into a wider European revolt
France is facing one of its darkest nightmares. A 143-year-old town hall burned in Limoges on Saturday night, its spire collapsing. In Marseille, protesters rammed their way into the city hall. In Paris, cobblestones were torn up at Place de la République and shops were looted. By Sunday, at least 1,800 people had been arrested, more than 500 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters had been injured, and one protester had died of cardiac arrest.
Most protests were peaceful. The spark was small. On September 17, teachers at Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, a Paris suburb, went on strike over unfilled posts, from maths and French teachers to the school nurse and social worker. Students blockaded the school in support. Reinforcements were sent, and the situation at that school calmed down, but the movement did not. It spread to hundreds of schools, carrying a plain list of grievances: overcrowded classrooms, absent teachers and decaying buildings. The anger runs deep because the state’s answer to squeezed household budgets and crumbling schools is austerity. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s 2027 budget seeks 54 billion in savings; without them, he says, the deficit would approach 6.5 per cent of GDP. The arithmetic is defensible. The politics are tone-deaf: sacrifice is being demanded of a generation whose own classrooms show what the state thinks of it. Then came the policing. A state that is both heavy-handed and indecisive earns contempt from both sides. The political arithmetic is worse. Since the 2024 snap election, France has had a hung National Assembly. Lecornu leads a minority government whose budget debate opened on October 13, and he needs either the Socialists or the National Rally to survive a censure vote. President Emmanuel Macron cannot stand again in next spring’s presidential election, and every party is already campaigning. France is the epicentre, not the exception. Italian students have occupied schools under the slogan “Let’s do as in France”; on Saturday, Milan saw 50 detentions, while Turin and Bologna saw clashes. Police fought protesters in Liège. Albania, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Germany and Austria have had demonstrations of their own. None of it is coordinated, and all of it shares a root. Europe borrowed its way through the pandemic and the energy shock, and higher fuel prices now meet higher borrowing costs.
France and Belgium run deficits above 5 per cent of GDP, while Austria’s is above 4 per cent. The bill lands first on schools, housing and public services, the places the young touch every day. The post-war bargain — taxes and patience in return for decent services and a future — has frayed. Fragmented parliaments cannot renegotiate it, and the extremes of the left and right collect the dividend.
The way forward starts with trust, not force. Paris should open real talks with student and trade unions this week and fund the gaps now: substitute teachers, nurses and repairs, starting in the poorest suburbs. France has been here before. Each time, the state restored order faster than it restored trust. A government that files a generation’s grievance under law and order will meet it again, in worse form.