French teenagers on Tuesday clashed with police as they kept up a blockade of high schools in cities across the country to demand better conditions and more teacher hirings. The escalating standoff came as unions staged a day of demonstrations against a cost-cutting budget drafted by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's embattled government.
French teenagers on Tuesday set fire to rubbish bins and hurled projectiles at police who responded with batons and tear gas, as pupils kept up blockades and protests at hundreds of high schools, demanding better conditions.
The movement in the lycées, which handle the final years of school in France, has angered the government.
Since last week, high school students have staged protests outside their schools over grievances including timetables, class sizes and a shortage of teachers as well as overheated classrooms during the recent heatwaves.
The protests started in the Ile-de-France region around Paris but have now spread to other cities nationwide.
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According to the education ministry, 400 schools were affected by protests or disruptions on Tuesday, out of some 3,700 across the country.
Some 40 were blockaded and 44 faced attempted blockades. Ten people, both students and staff, were wounded and hundreds, most of them minors, were detained.
"440 were detained across national territory," Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on BFMTV. "We don't have the final tally yet, but I'm told two thirds led to police custody."
Education Minister Édouard Geffray condemned the violence.
"Legal proceedings have been initiated against these actions. This violence is unspeakable," Geffray posted to X.
"To legitimise it or ... call for an expansion of the blockades is to endanger both our students and public officials. It is irresponsible."
In one lycée in the Paris suburbs, teachers formed a line around protesting students in a bid to protect them from the police.
Masked pupils gathered outside the Lycée César 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.
In the western city of Nantes, teens piled up dozens of bins to prevent entrance to the Lycée Gabriel Guist'hau, while in Paris there was an uneasy standoff between 30 students and a contingent of police at the Arago school.
Similar clashes were also reported in cities including Marseille in the south, Bordeaux in the west and Lyon in the southeast.
'Children of the suburbs'
Around 80 students gathered outside the Lamartine school in Paris, brandishing slogans including "More hours of lessons than sleep" and "8am to 6pm: are we pupils or under arrest?"
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.
The actions came as unions staged a day of nationwide demonstrations and strikes over the budget of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron.
The CGT union said 300,000 marched across France, including 70,000 in the capital. Police put the Paris figure at 30,000, including 8,000 firefighters. Public transport was not badly affected however.
"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 CGT union Sophie Binet told BFM TV.
Lecornu said on Monday any escalation of demonstrations at high schools would be "irresponsible" and lashed out at the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, who he accused of encouraging the protests.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez 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 national hymn, the Marseillaise, he described the protests as "completely legitimate" and complained that low-income areas received less resources than higher-income ones.
When a crowd formed, police with anti-riot shields struck the students and an AFP journalist with batons.
"We, the children of the suburbs, are abandoned and neglected," said 16-year-old Victoire, a student at the school, denouncing conditions at the establishment as "unsanitary".
"Sometimes, violence can be legitimate," Bagayoko, who denied accusations he had set fire to a bin at the school, told BFM TV on Tuesday. "But whenever it can be avoided, it is better," he added.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
