France is in turmoil. More than half a million people hit the streets on October 17, as protests swept across the country. As the administration greeted the protesters with a large deployment of riot police, peaceful demonstrations were engulfed by violence in many places. Arsonists set fire to the Lyon tourist office and burnt down the Limoges City Hall, a historic municipal building. Protesters stormed the townhall in Marseille and attacked the prefect’s residence in Bordeaux. In Paris’s Place de la Republique, protesting youth who clashed with the police torched vehicles and looted shops. Luxury retailers such as Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Dior and Galeries Lafayette suffered millions of dollars in losses as their stores were ransacked. Police arrested or detained more than 6,000 people, including hundreds of minors.
Editorial | Fall of the centre: on the public discontent in France
With the police outnumbered and unable to protect public and private property, several cities resorted to full or partial curfews. Government officials have blamed the unrest on “seditionists from far-left fringe groups”. They have accused La France Insoumise, or LFI (France Unbowed), the leftwing political party launched by veteran politician Jean-Luc Melenchon (75), of inciting the protests with the aim of extracting political mileage ahead of the presidential elections in April 2027.
In a televised address to the nation, President Emmanuel Macron took a hard stance on the protests and rioting, stating: “Nothing justifies it, nothing explains it, nothing excuses it.” The protesters, however, have refused to back down. They issued a nationwide call to hit the streets again on Saturday, October 24. The Macron administration, taken by surprise on October 17, responded by deploying around 70,000 police across the country, with the Interior Minister Laurent Nunez making it clear that the government would be “extremely” firm and not tolerate anything.”
The protests, like other similar upsurges seen in recent times across the world, including in India, were led by youth angered by an education system failing to meet their needs. In the case of France, the spark was lit on September 17 in a high school named Lycee Saint-Exupery in the Parisian suburb of Creteil. Students, fed up with the dilapidated school infrastructure – leaking roofs, clogged toilets, cockroach infestation, overcrowded classrooms with no air-conditioning leading to cases of heat stress – and shortage of nurses and teaching staff, decided to vent their frustration by blockading the school entrance.
Angry youth
Thanks to social media, this singular action by a bunch of angry teens in one school sparked a proliferation of copycat school blockades. In a matter of weeks, more than 600 schools and dozens of universities joined the movement, which began to resonate with the broader public that saw their demands as fully justified.
‘Four riot police for one student/One Professor for thirty-five’ read one placard, a reference to the teacher shortage and over-sized classrooms in French schools. The teacher crisis in France has been in the making for a long time. A combination of poor pay, little to no prospects for growth, and tough working conditions has seen a steady stream of teachers moving out of the profession altogether. At the same time, the government, instead of replacing the exiting staff, has been happy to shut down the vacancies, with more than 4,000 teaching positions closed in 2026 alone.
Adding to the students’ frustration over the paucity of teachers were the successive heat waves in France this year, which exposed the rundown school buildings as totally unsuitable for the vagaries of climate change. Hundreds of schools were forced to stay closed on the hottest days and critical school-leaving exams had to be postponed. And yet, the Macron administration has been slow to act when it comes to investing in renovation of this infrastructure. Given that the crisis is more acute in public schools, there is also a growing perception that Mr. Macron and his ministers are clueless about the crisis in France’s education system because they are themselves products of expensive private schools.
The October 17 mobilisation has made it clear that a movement initiated by high schoolers has managed to forge alliances with adults across social sections. What has been described as a “cost of living” crisis, a moniker typically associated with rising fuel costs, unaffordable rents, housing crisis, and increasing precarity of the working classes, is a direct outcome of neoliberal policy choices made by Mr. Macron since he came to power in 2017.
From tax cuts for the wealthier households, to privatisation of profit-making state assets such as the national lottery, slashing of corporate income tax from 33.5% to 25%, labour reforms, pension reforms and unemployment insurance reforms all taken together had the inevitable outcome of privatising gains while socialising costs. Not surprisingly, the by now familiar fall-out of sustained neoliberal policies – stagnant wages, growing inequality, a steady shrinkage in public expenditure as profits are cornered by a tiny elite – have come home to roost in the form of this unrest.
The crisis induced by neoliberalism has left France under a mountain of public debt, which has ballooned to more than $4 trillion, or nearly 120% of its GDP. The sell-off in French sovereign bonds has pushed up its borrowing costs to 5%, leaving little fiscal room for Mr. Macron to respond meaningfully to his citizens’ demands. Mr. Macron, therefore, appears to have settled on a strategy of police intimidation and blaming the far-left, in the hope that the simmering discontent subsides by the time the Presidential elections come around.
The right-left divide
On the other hand, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN or National Rally), led by Marine Le Pen, who finished second in the 2022 presidential race, is playing on Mr. Macron’s seeming “lack of authority” and “inability” to secure the streets by promising to restore law and order of elected to power. At the same time, Ms. Le Pen has accused the leftwing LFI of both encouraging and legitimising the disorder.
However, the politician best placed to ride the current wave of unrest may well be Mr. Melenchon. His FLI, over the years, has become adept at amplifying the concerns and demands of the students and the youth, and many FLI leaders actively joined the students at the barricades. But most high schoolers are too young to vote, and of all the age groups, the younger voters (18-34) have traditionally recorded some of the lowest turnouts in French Presidential elections. When added to the fact that in an ageing society the youth as a whole have limited electoral weight, it remains to be seen whether the French Left can make the large-scale unrest against nearly 10 years of Macronism count at the hustings.
Published – October 25, 2026 01:15 am IST
