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Can French teenagers still bend a government? · Pollar Sounds

• 0:00
  Students outside the Lycée Hélène Boucher: Money for schools, not for the army!
• 0:05
  Students outside the Lycée Hélène Boucher: Money for schools, not for the army!
• 0:09
  Tuesday the 6th of October, on an avenue in eastern Paris.
• 0:14
  Teachers and parents linked arms.
• 0:16
  They made a line along the edge of the march, between the students and the riot police.
• 0:22
  Police: Last warning. We are going to use force. Leave the area immediately.
• 0:37
  Human chain outside the Lycée Hélène Boucher: They're our kids. They're your kids.
• 0:40
  The police gave the crowd a last warning.
• 0:43
  A few seconds later, someone in the line shouted back: "They're our kids. They're your kids."
• 0:50
  The students behind that line were teenagers. Some of them 15, 16 years old.
• 0:56
  And for almost three weeks, they'd been blockading their own schools.
• 0:59
  That same day, in the same march, the mayor of Saint-Denis, a town just north of Paris,
• 1:06
  stepped in between the students and the riot police.
• 1:08
  His name is Bally Bagayoko. He says he was caught in the tear gas.
• 1:13
  Afterwards, he told Reuters: "They could be my children."
• 1:17
  To his supporters, that was courage. To his critics, it was politics.
• 1:22
  He's from France Unbowed, the radical left,
• 1:25
  and the government accuses his party of fanning the protests.
• 1:29
  The left says the government ordered the repression.
• 1:32
  On Tuesday in parliament, the Prime Minister answered.
• 1:36
  Any talk of political orders to repress the students was false.
• 1:40
  A lie. And a slur on the police of the Republic.
• 1:44
  Sébastien Lecornu: It's false. It's a lie, and it brings shame on the police of the Republic.
• 1:52
  Whatever the politics, the students' own demands are about their schools.
• 1:56
  More teachers. Smaller classes. Buildings that don't fall apart.
• 2:01
  Even the government has made school buildings one of its five priorities.
• 2:05
  And the students want the money now.
• 2:07
  Students with a megaphone: Strike! Blockade! Macron, out! Strike! Blockade!
• 2:15
  And can they actually win?
• 2:17
  This is Pollar. Everything in this episode comes from reporting already published,
• 2:23
  and where people disagree, you'll hear each side in its own words.
• 2:28
  Today, the high school protests in France. What the students want.
• 2:33
  And why France has seen all this before.
• 2:35
  Because French students have brought down laws more than once.
• 2:40
  And this week, it got bigger.
• 2:43
  On Tuesday, the government counted more than a quarter of a million people marching across France.
• 2:48
  That evening, President Macron called his Prime Minister and his education minister
• 2:53
  to the Élysée Palace for a crisis meeting.
• 3:01
  So, what is this actually about? Where did it start?
• 3:06
  Small. Teachers at one high school in Créteil, just south-east of Paris, went on strike.
• 3:12
  They were short a maths teacher, a French teacher and a history teacher,
• 3:16
  and the school nurse was off sick.
• 3:18
  The next morning, their students blocked the gate with bins.
• 3:22
  And within two weeks, it had spread.
• 3:25
  First through the suburbs around Paris. Then to Marseille and Lille. Then across the country.
• 3:31
  On the 6th of October, the education ministry counted almost 900 high schools with classes suspended,
• 3:38
  for one reason or another. That's nearly one in four of the country's high schools.
• 3:42
  To see what they're angry about, go to the ninth district of Paris.
• 3:47
  There's a high school there called Jacques-Decour.
• 3:50
  For years, parts of it have been wrapped in protective netting,
• 3:53
  to stop bits of the building falling on the students.
• 3:56
  That's according to the Italian news agency ANSA, which quoted one of its pupils:
• 4:01
  "It's true that everything is burning. But what burns most is our heart."
• 4:07
  That's in the middle of Paris.
• 4:09
  In Créteil, a final-year student told the news agency AFP that half the heating doesn't work,
• 4:15
  and that in summer they bake. Students elsewhere have reported rats.
• 4:20
  And the classes are crowded. In general high schools, the average class is just over 30.
• 4:27
  One student in Saint-Ouen, near Paris, told AFP: "There are 34 in my class."
• 4:33
  One of the student unions, the Union étudiante, has written 10 demands down.
• 4:38
  An emergency plan to repair the buildings.
• 4:41
  Mass hiring: teachers, nurses, psychologists.
• 4:45
  One nurse and one psychologist for every 500 pupils.
• 4:50
  And on the list: an end to selection through Parcoursup.
• 4:54
  Some want the whole thing scrapped.
• 4:56
  The website that decides who goes to which university.
• 5:00
  Okay. Hold on. What does Parcoursup actually do?
• 5:04
  Every student in France who wants to go on to university after the baccalauréat, the final school exam,
• 5:10
  applies through one website. They list the courses they want.
• 5:14
  Each course ranks its applicants, on their marks, their school reports and a letter.
• 5:20
  Then the offers come through. Or they don't,
• 5:23
  and you watch your place on a waiting list move for weeks.
• 5:27
  And before Parcoursup?
• 5:28
  A system called APB. When a popular course ran out of places,
• 5:33
  the last ones could be settled by drawing lots.
• 5:37
  Parcoursup replaced it in 2018, and the government said it was fairer.
• 5:42
  And the students say?
• 5:44
  That nobody quite knows how they're being ranked.
• 5:47
  Students from poorer schools say it works against them.
• 5:50
  Supporters answer that when there aren't enough places, someone has to choose,
• 5:55
  and marks are fairer than luck.
• 5:57
  On the marches, the demands go wider than the list.
• 6:00
  The chant you heard at the start: "Money for schools, not for the army."
• 6:05
  One pupil in Nîmes told a local paper that this year's ban on phones in high schools was the last straw.
• 6:12
  A teacher in Angers told Ouest-France: "I have 227 students to follow."
• 6:17
  And the head of one students' union says some classes go months without a French teacher,
• 6:23
  in the year they sit their French exam.
• 6:25
  So far, that sounds like a strike about staffing. But it hasn't stayed peaceful.
• 6:31
  No. By the evening of Thursday the 8th of October, the justice ministry counted 6,877 people
• 6:38
  held in police custody since the violence began. 86% of them minors, the ministry says.
• 6:45
  On the 4th of October, the education minister said 24 schools had been burned or ransacked.
• 6:51
  And people have been hurt, on all sides.
• 6:54
  By Friday the 9th, the government counted more than 800 police and gendarmes injured,
• 7:00
  and more than 200 students.
• 7:02
  The interior minister says most of the students' injuries were accidents,
• 7:06
  or came from things thrown by other protesters.
• 7:09
  On Monday the 5th, in Lens, in northern France,
• 7:13
  a 15-year-old lost a hand when a police stun grenade went off.
• 7:17
  The prosecutor now says the grenade was fired from 80 metres, landed on the ground,
• 7:22
  and the boy picked it up. His lawyer says he didn't. There's no direct footage.
• 7:28
  After Lens, the interior minister suspended stun grenades for the school protests.
• 7:33
  In Tours, a 16-year-old lost the use of an eye.
• 7:37
  By Friday the 9th, the police inspectorate had opened 24 investigations into how officers behaved.
• 7:44
  And the United Nations human rights office said it was following the incidents "with concern".
• 7:49
  Young people here carry an older image too.
• 7:52
  In December 2018, in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris, police arrested 151 young people,
• 7:59
  aged 12 to 21, outside a high school,
• 8:03
  and filmed them kneeling in rows with their hands on their heads.
• 8:06
  A voice on the video says: "Here's a class that knows how to behave."
• 8:10
  It went viral, and protesters across France copied the pose.
• 8:15
  So that's what they want. Teachers in every classroom. Smaller classes. Buildings that are safe.
• 8:22
  And an end to Parcoursup. And it hasn't stayed peaceful.
• 8:26
  So why do French teenagers believe that walking out will get them any of it?
• 8:31
  Because in France, it has worked before. Not every time.
• 8:41
  In May 1968, a student revolt in Paris became a national strike,
• 8:46
  and shook President de Gaulle's hold on power.
• 8:49
  France still tells that story about itself.
• 8:52
  That when young people take to the streets, the country listens.
• 8:56
  The story that's much closer to now is 1986.
• 9:00
  The government wanted to let universities choose their own students, and set their own fees.
• 9:05
  The plan was named after the minister behind it, Alain Devaquet.
• 9:10
  Students saw it as the end of the idea that university was open
• 9:13
  to everyone who passed the final school exam.
• 9:16
  A similar fight to Parcoursup, then. Who gets into university, and who decides.
• 9:22
  Hundreds of thousands marched. On the 5th of December, the government dropped the contested points.
• 9:28
  That night, a 22-year-old student called Malik Oussekine was beaten by police in Paris. He died.
• 9:35
  The next morning, the President of the National Assembly opened the sitting
• 9:39
  with the announcement of the death.
• 9:41
  "Last night," he said, "added a death to the two people seriously injured the evening before.
• 9:48
  The whole National Assembly deplores it."
• 9:51
  The minister quit that same day. Two days later, the whole bill was withdrawn.
• 9:57
  So that's what French students have won before. One bill, dropped.
• 10:02
  Hold that thought, because this time there is no bill.
• 10:05
  20 years later, they won again. 2006. The First Employment Contract.
• 10:12
  A new contract for under-26s, that let employers fire young workers
• 10:17
  in their first two years without giving a reason.
• 10:20
  To get it through parliament, the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin,
• 10:23
  used a special power in the constitution, article 49.3.
• 10:28
  Which lets the government pass a law without a final vote.
• 10:32
  MPs can stop it only by voting the government out.
• 10:35
  Dominique de Villepin: I have the honour, Mr President, to stake the government's responsibility. I do mean: the government's responsibility.
• 10:45
  "I stake the government's responsibility," he said, on the whole bill.
• 10:50
  It became law at the end of March.
• 10:52
  Students and unions marched together, from the first day.
• 10:56
  And on the 10th of April, the government dropped it.
• 10:59
  A law, this time. And still dropped.
• 11:03
  Now the one they lost. 2023.
• 11:06
  The government wanted to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. Months of marches.
• 11:12
  And on the 16th of March, the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, used the same power. The 49.3.
• 11:20
  Élisabeth Borne: So, on the basis of article 49, paragraph 3, of the Constitution, I stake the responsibility of my government on the whole…
• 11:30
  The same formula Villepin had read in 2006. The opposition sang the Marseillaise to drown her out.
• 11:38
  And this time, the government didn't back down.
• 11:42
  On the 14th of April, the Constitutional Council cleared the heart of the law,
• 11:46
  and the pension age started going up.
• 11:49
  Since then, it has been put on hold until 2028,
• 11:53
  as the price of keeping a weak government in office.
• 11:56
  So the record is mixed.
• 11:58
  When there was one text to drop, students and unions together have made governments drop it.
• 12:03
  When the government held on, it got its way, at least for a while.
• 12:07
  And this time, there's no text. There's a budget.
• 12:11
  Which is where the second half of the story comes in.
• 12:14
  Why is this government so weak, and does that help the students or hurt them?
• 12:19
  On the 9th of June 2024, the night of the European elections,
• 12:24
  President Macron went on television and said: "So tonight, I am dissolving the National Assembly."
• 12:30
  He called a snap election. His camp lost about 80 seats.
• 12:35
  Since then, parliament has been split three ways, with no bloc anywhere near a majority.
• 12:41
  And MPs have voted out two governments over the budget.
• 12:44
  Michel Barnier, in December 2024. Then François Bayrou, in September 2025.
• 12:52
  He asked for a vote of confidence on France's debt, and told MPs:
• 12:56
  "You have the power to bring down the government. You don't have the power to erase reality."
• 13:02
  They brought it down, 364 votes to 194.
• 13:07
  Then Sébastien Lecornu. He resigned after less than a month,
• 13:11
  and four days later Macron gave him the job back.
• 13:15
  And the debt itself?
• 13:16
  France owes more than everything it produces in a year.
• 13:20
  The Treasury's own plan, from the 6th of October,
• 13:23
  puts the debt at almost 122% of national output next year, and a little higher the year after,
• 13:29
  before it starts to fall in 2029.
• 13:33
  To cut the deficit, the budget for 2027 asks for what the government calls
• 13:38
  a 54-billion-euro effort: savings, and some tax rises.
• 13:43
  And the schools? Next year's plan gives the education ministry about 1.2 billion euros more.
• 13:50
  But about 1,600 teaching posts go.
• 13:53
  So a government this weak cuts both ways for the students.
• 13:56
  It fears a vote in parliament, so it listens. And it has less to give.
• 14:02
  That's how France got here. Students who have won before, when there was one text to drop.
• 14:08
  No text this time. A budget. And a government with no majority, under pressure to save.
• 14:14
  So, can they win against that?
• 14:22
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• 14:27
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• 14:30
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• 14:34
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• 14:38
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• 14:44
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• 14:58
  Back to Tuesday the 6th of October. The biggest day.
• 15:02
  The interior ministry counted 256,000 marchers across France, 56,000 of them in Paris.
• 15:10
  Organisers said 450,000.
• 15:13
  And this time it wasn't only students. The teaching unions marched with them.
• 15:18
  So did the leaders of the left: Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Unbowed,
• 15:23
  Marine Tondelier of the Greens, and Olivier Faure of the Socialists.
• 15:27
  In the afternoon, at the Place de la Nation, police used tear gas
• 15:31
  on what they called 300 hostile people at the front of the march.
• 15:35
  Three shop fronts were damaged. There were clashes in Lyon, Nantes, Rennes and Toulouse too.
• 15:42
  488 people were arrested that day. 43 police and gendarmes were hurt.
• 15:48
  So who's to blame for the violence? Two answers, and they were given hours apart.
• 15:54
  Mélenchon had already said, at the end of September, that the government "ordered the repression".
• 16:00
  He has called on students to keep their methods non-violent,
• 16:03
  and asked parents to surround the marches to protect them.
• 16:07
  That afternoon, in parliament, an MP from the government's own side
• 16:11
  asked the Prime Minister about the protests.
• 16:14
  Sébastien Lecornu called the injuries accidents. And then:
• 16:18
  Sébastien Lecornu: …police violence, to suggest there were political instructions for police repression. It's false, it's a lie, and it brings shame on the police of the Republic.
• 16:30
  Any suggestion of political orders for police repression, he said, was false.
• 16:36
  A lie. And a slur on the police of the Republic.
• 16:40
  Sébastien Lecornu: The situation is serious enough not to need a cowardly political class that fans the flames and tries to stir up violence so it can condemn it all the better afterwards.
• 16:55
  Things are serious enough, he said, without a cowardly political class fanning the flames.
• 17:01
  Stirring up violence, so it can condemn it afterwards.
• 17:05
  He didn't name the party. Everyone in the room knew which one he meant.
• 17:09
  Sébastien Lecornu: …burning a high school doesn't improve the state of school buildings, and lynching a teacher doesn't improve the rate at which teachers are replaced.
• 17:20
  Burning down a high school, he said, won't fix the school buildings.
• 17:24
  And lynching a teacher won't get absent teachers replaced any faster.
• 17:28
  The government's spokeswoman, Maud Bregeon, says the government's job is "to restore order".
• 17:35
  And the education minister, Édouard Geffray, was asked about the police.
• 17:38
  "Illegal violence," he said, "is violence that must be punished."
• 17:44
  If an officer breaks the rules, there'll be an investigation, and a sanction.
• 17:49
  The courts are already busy.
• 17:51
  By the 8th of October, prosecutors had brought proceedings against 2,376 people.
• 17:57
  And near Paris, in Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, a judge has formally named a police officer as a suspect,
• 18:04
  after a tear-gas canister fired at a 14-year-old broke his jaw, on the 28th of September.
• 18:10
  The officer says he was protecting himself and his colleagues.
• 18:13
  Prosecutors say the force he used wasn't proportionate.
• 18:17
  The boy's family has filed a complaint for attempted murder.
• 18:20
  So that's the fight over blame. Now the question that decides whether the students win.
• 18:26
  What is the government actually offering?
• 18:28
  Sébastien Lecornu: …with a 1.2 billion increase in the education ministry's budget for next year, it would be hard to say there is no room for manoeuvre here or there. Savings will have to be found elsewhere, but on this we can find urgent answers. In any case, I am opening that door, that is obvious.
• 18:46
  Lecornu again, that same afternoon.
• 18:48
  With 1.2 billion euros more for the education ministry next year, he said,
• 18:53
  there must be room somewhere for urgent answers, even if savings have to be found elsewhere.
• 18:59
  "I'm opening that door."
• 19:01
  That 1.2 billion was already in the draft budget.
• 19:06
  The next evening, Wednesday the 7th, he went on television.
• 19:09
  "The anger of the young," he said, "doesn't come from nowhere."
• 19:15
  He named five things to fix, from replacing absent teachers to making Parcoursup clearer.
• 19:21
  But no money beyond what the budget already had. And no decisions until the end of October.
• 19:27
  Then, on Thursday the 8th, the education minister promised 3,000 replacement teachers,
• 19:33
  to be placed in schools by Tuesday the 13th at the latest. They weren't new hires.
• 19:39
  Ministers said these were replacement teachers already employed, just not in front of a class.
• 19:44
  On the 13th, he said about a third of them had been placed.
• 19:48
  Earlier that same day, a spokeswoman for the Union étudiante had set the students' price.
• 19:53
  Until there's 10 billion euros on the table, she said, they'll keep protesting.
• 19:59
  10 billion, from a budget looking for 54 billion the other way.
• 20:04
  Not every student voice said no. That Thursday, one student leader said he saw "some progress".
• 20:11
  Since then: on Sunday the 11th, Lecornu said the government will table amendments
• 20:16
  to next year's budget to take up some of the students' proposals. He hasn't said which.
• 20:21
  On Monday the 12th, President Macron called for calm.
• 20:25
  And now the unions have joined in. On Monday the 5th, five unions,
• 20:30
  including France's two biggest, the CFDT and the CGT,
• 20:35
  called a national strike for the 5th of November. Public sector and private.
• 20:40
  It's a strike against the budget.
• 20:42
  But in their statement they said they "share the demands" for better conditions in school.
• 20:47
  In 2006, students and unions together got one law dropped.
• 20:52
  This time the unions' strike is against the whole budget. And there's no law to drop.
• 20:58
  And there's a number this government watches more than any march.
• 21:02
  In early October, the interest France pays to borrow for 10 years
• 21:06
  came within a whisker of 5% a year. The highest since 2002.
• 21:11
  Which leaves the election. France chooses a new president in April.
• 21:16
  The first round is on the 18th, the second on the 2nd of May. Macron can't stand again.
• 21:22
  In the polls, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally has been on between 30 and 37%
• 21:28
  in the first round, far ahead of everyone else.
• 21:32
  Behind her, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the centre-right's Édouard Philippe are fighting for second place.
• 21:38
  Which of them is ahead depends on the poll.
• 21:40
  In July, an appeal court upheld Le Pen's conviction for misusing EU funds,
• 21:46
  but shortened her ban from public office. So she can run, for now.
• 21:51
  Her own appeal to France's highest court is still pending.
• 21:55
  Mélenchon has marched with the students. Le Pen's party campaigns on order and security.
• 22:01
  Either way, whoever is in the Élysée next spring
• 22:04
  inherits whatever this government promises at the end of October.
• 22:07
  So, what happens next? On the 6th, almost 900 high schools had classes suspended.
• 22:14
  By the morning of Thursday the 8th, 375.
• 22:18
  On Monday the 12th, 130 were fully closed, and the ministry said more than 96% were open.
• 22:25
  But it also said the violence was intensifying, with new blockades in Rennes, Strasbourg and Tours.
• 22:32
  Then came Tuesday the 13th, the fifth day of action, called by students and teachers' unions together.
• 22:39
  The police had expected between 130,000 and 200,000 marchers.
• 22:44
  At midday, 214 high schools were closed, some of them as a precaution along the march routes.
• 22:50
  The government's first decisions are due at the end of October. The unions strike on the 5th of November.
• 22:57
  So where does that leave the students? The unions are with them.
• 23:01
  The police expected smaller marches than on the 6th.
• 23:04
  The government has offered 3,000 replacement teachers, all of them already on the payroll,
• 23:09
  and only about a third of them placed so far.
• 23:12
  A suspension of stun grenades. And budget amendments it hasn't written yet.
• 23:16
  No new money so far. And no decisions until the end of October.
• 23:21
  And the students say that's not enough to take back to class.
• 23:32
  Since the 1st of October, across the border in Belgium,
• 23:35
  school and university students have been blocking schools and streets,
• 23:39
  mostly in Wallonia, the French-speaking south, but in Brussels too.
• 23:43
  In Liège, it turned into rioting.
• 23:46
  Police there made close to 200 arrests in the first week alone, most of them preventive.
• 23:52
  Their anger is aimed at cuts by the authority that runs French-language schools,
• 23:56
  in Wallonia and in Brussels.
• 23:59
  Since August, upper-secondary teachers there teach two more lessons a week for the same pay,
• 24:04
  and long-term sick pay is less generous.
• 24:07
  And the full university fee, which about six in 10 students pay, has gone up,
• 24:12
  from 835 euros a year to 1,194.
• 24:18
  Belgium's interior minister, Bernard Quintin, blamed parents, schools,
• 24:23
  and what he called an "antifa-type" movement,
• 24:26
  saying adults were manipulating children to push violent political messages.
• 24:30
  The Liège police said they couldn't say the rioters were antifa.
• 24:34
  And in Italy, a student collective in Turin has started occupying schools,
• 24:39
  and since then students in Rome have followed.
• 24:42
  Their slogan, according to ANSA: "Let's do what they did in France."
• 24:47
  So three neighbours, one complaint.
• 24:50
  Students saying their schools are paying for their governments' other priorities.
• 24:54
  Which brings it back to the question. Can they win?
• 24:58
  In the past, French students won by making a government drop one text.
• 25:02
  This time there's no text. There's a budget.
• 25:05
  And the government says it's already spending more on schools, while cutting posts.
• 25:10
  What the students have so far is 3,000 teachers who were already on the payroll,
• 25:15
  a suspension of stun grenades, and a promise of decisions by the end of October.
• 25:20
  Whether that counts as winning is the question the end of October will answer.
• 25:24
  And all of it, six months before the French choose a new president.
• 25:29
  That's where we leave it today.
• 25:31
  Thanks for listening to this episode of Pollar.