Brussels – France is taking to the streets, but the protests go beyond education. The focus is on an increasingly fragile social model, cuts to public spending and a future that many young people feel is closing in on them. Since mid-September, thousands of secondary school pupils have been blocking French schools to protest against overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of teachers, dilapidated buildings and excessively long school days. Yesterday (6 October), the protests reached their peak: over 250,000 people, according to the Ministry of the Interior, and around 450,000 according to the organisers, took to the streets in dozens of towns and cities.
The movement began as a protest specifically focused on education, but it quickly became intertwined with the more general discontent over the country’s economic conditions. Sébastien Lecornu’s government must seek to curb the deficit and public debt at the very moment when students are calling for greater investment in public services. And tensions are further fuelled by the approach of the 2027 presidential elections, in a country that is becoming increasingly politically polarised.
Clashes with the police are further complicating the overall picture. The toll from weeks of protests is heavy: thousands of arrests and hundreds of people injured, including students, school staff, and police officers. The most violent incidents occurred mainly in Paris, but tensions and clashes with the police have also been reported in Lyon, Toulouse, Rennes, Nantes, and Strasbourg, while in Lens a 15-year-old lost a hand after coming into contact with a grenade used by the police.
This is not an isolated case. People in other EU countries are voicing different grievances, but these are often rooted in the same feeling: that of a generation being asked to adapt to economic conditions worse than those experienced by their parents. In Spain, thousands of people have protested against the cost of housing and evictions, following the rejection of the emergency housing plan tabled in Parliament by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who called a snap election, effectively seeking a new term with a larger majority. In Belgium, too, students have taken to the streets to protest against reforms involving cuts to education spending and an increase in university fees.
However, a second narrative has also been superimposed on the actual protests – one constructed on social media using fake or out-of-context videos. According to an analysis by NewsGuard, four pieces of content that have gone viral in recent weeks have been used to exaggerate the scale and violence of the French protests; three of them have no connection whatsoever with the ongoing demonstrations.
Among the videos being shared is one showing a crowd storming the Paris Stock Exchange – which was actually filmed during the 2023 protests against pension reform – and another showing protesters of African origin at the Gare du Nord, but which dates back to a protest in 2017. According to NewsGuard, the circulation of this content helps to paint a picture of chaos and instability that is far more widespread than that documented on the ground, while also fuelling narratives about immigration and the ineffectiveness of the French authorities.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
