LIVE - High school student anger: there are “shared demands”, but “violence does not serve the purpose”, believes the principals’ union

The State will extend the authorization to open on Sundays to Parisian leather goods, travel goods and clothing businesses in the districts affected by the looting and damage of October 17, the Île-de-France prefecture announced on Friday, the eve of Act V against “high cost of living”. Last week, the regional prefecture had already allowed food retail businesses, jewelry stores and department stores to open three Sundays in a row in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 15th and 20th arrondissements of the capital.

While many Parisian businesses close their doors on Saturdays during demonstrations, particularly on the parade route, the prefecture authorizes new branches in these same sectors to “open exceptionally” on Sundays, November 15 and 22 and December 27 “in order to support their activity”. Retail establishments selling leather goods and travel items, as well as clothing, will be able to benefit from these exemptions if they request them, specifies the prefecture in a press release. The Île-de-France region and the City of Paris announced at the end of October an emergency fund of 13 million euros to help the approximately 450 businesses vandalized on the sidelines of the demonstrations against the high cost of living on October 17 and 18, according to the town hall census.

On Thursday, the regional council led by Valérie Pécresse (LR) adopted an initial flat-rate aid of 5,000 euros “without waiting for insurance compensation to repair the damage and replace damaged equipment as quickly as possible”. As well as additional aid of 2,000 euros to secure businesses (cameras, grilles, alarms, etc.) for which all establishments are eligible. To this regional aid will be added 2,500 euros from the City of Paris, 1,500 euros from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) and 1,500 euros from the Métropole du Grand Paris, “i.e. a total of up to 12,500 euros per business,” said the Region.

The mayors of the right-wing Parisian districts have contacted the Paris rectorate to ask the prefecture for measures to “secure the entrances and exits” of blocked high schools, we learned on Friday from the mayor of the 17th.

“We ask you to contact the police prefect without delay so that appropriate perimeter orders can be issued around the high schools concerned, making it possible to prevent gatherings likely to hinder access to establishments and cause disturbances to public order,” write in a letter addressed Tuesday to the rector of the Paris Academy the right-wing mayors of eight districts of the capital (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th and 17th). These measures should be able to “secure entrances and exits from establishments, protect students and staff and guarantee all those who wish the possibility of following their lessons”, they continue.

“There is a resignation from the State in the face of the situation. Currently, the police do not have orders to unblock high schools. It is up to the rectorate and the prefecture to find the solutions,” Geoffroy Boulard, LR mayor of the 17th, told AFP at the initiative of the letter. “In our capacity as district mayors, we are regularly contacted by worried parents”, while “each day of lessons lost penalizes the students, further weakens those who are already encountering difficulties and compromises their preparation for the baccalaureate”, continues the letter.

The Prime Minister's announcements Friday morning to the public service unions are "completely out of step" with their expectations, criticized Sophie Binet of the CGT at the end of a meeting, speaking on behalf of the public service inter-union which is calling for a strike on Tuesday.

“Once again, the Prime Minister has made announcements completely out of step with the social urgency of the situation of public officials and with the social anger expressed in the country,” denounced the general secretary of the CGT at the end of this meeting in Matignon.

INFO LE FIGARO - While intelligence services anticipate disturbances to public order, 70,000 police officers and gendarmes will once again be deployed across the country. In a note to the prefects, the minister anticipates “serious disturbances to public order”.

“I ask you not to let your guard down in the face of more fragmented or even sporadic phenomena whose level of violence does not decrease in intensity”: with the approach of a new Saturday of social anger at very high risks, the Minister of the Interior fears, in a telegram addressed Thursday to the prefects and bosses of the police, a new episode of violence across the country.

The National Education unions denounced on Friday the Prime Minister's comments on possible complicity of staff in the violence around high schools, accusing him of fueling tensions rather than contributing to their appeasement. “This statement by the Prime Minister is a provocation which can only lead to fueling tensions in an already critical situation,” Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the leading high school and college union, told AFP.

Sébastien Lecornu spoke on Thursday of the case of certain high schools where “logistical planning is being put in place to deliver the mortars” of fireworks with, according to him, “people who sometimes, within the very confines of this high school, engage in complicity”. “There is a certain amount of information coming back to us which is totally in this direction,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirmed on LCI on Friday morning, while referring to a “tiny minority of cases” and calling for caution.

For the unions, these statements implicate the staff without specific elements supporting the suspicions. “Even if there are colleagues concerned and this remains to be demonstrated, procedures are planned,” recalls Sophie Vénétitay.

The CFDT announced in a press release on Friday that it would join the call for a strike and public mobilization on November 17 after a meeting in Matignon on remuneration where the government announced the opening of a one-month discussion on low wages.

“The government still refuses to release adequate budgetary resources to respond to the continued loss of purchasing power of agents,” wrote the third union force in the Civil Service, denouncing proposals which “do not constitute real progress” with “hundreds of thousands of agents” whose basic salary will remain below the minimum wage.

Sébastien Lecornu announced on Friday, following a meeting with civil servant unions, the opening of a “rapid” one-month discussion on five projects, one of which will focus on “emergency measures to improve low salaries”.

“I am opening today a rapid one-month discussion on five projects” which will focus on “emergency measures to revalorize low salaries”, a “structural reform of salary scales”, “equal pay” between women and men, the payment of “certain transport costs”, the strengthening of the “protection” of injured or threatened agents, and the “protection of the neutrality and independence” of civil servants, details the Prime Minister on X. He will receive the unions again on December 11, after the professional elections in the Civil Service, to “seal progress from mid-December”.

As the social movement takes hold, the catalytic role of social networks is no longer in doubt. To identify crisis signals and prevent violence, the executive is trying to sift through the platforms, where calls to demonstrate compete with inflammatory harangues. But, as the Minister of the Interior himself admitted, the executive struggles to identify the most viral videos, on TikTok in particular, and therefore to anticipate the scale of the movements. One of the failing elements of the system would be the Canadian software Talkwalker, with which the government signed a contract a little over a year ago.

This media monitoring tool allows you to analyze public data from social networks, alert on viral content or anticipate “buzz”. On the market, other specialized companies, such as Visibrain or Brandwatch, specialize in what specialists call “social listening” and “media monitoring”. “Talkwalker is an expert in processing raw data on social networks to make it usable,” explains Guillaume Sylvestre, teacher in data analysis at the School of Economic Warfare. “From a mass of data, it draws processed and cleaned data.”

For more than three weeks, the Parisian police have been engaged in a hunt of exceptional magnitude to identify the looters who swept through the capital during the riots of October 17. The scenes of rampage shocked the whole of France and the police found themselves with their backs against the wall before preparing the response. “From the outset, the machinery of the Police Prefecture had to respond to extraordinary problems,” explained this Thursday the divisional commissioner Nicolas Hergot, head of Territorial Security (ST 75), placed at the forefront of the investigations. An initial assessment reveals that 228 complaints from Parisian traders were filed for the looting.

An already significant number, which rises to 450 if we add the only damaged shops, whose windows were shattered, without the thugs having had time to rob them. “A single service could not handle such a volume of procedures,” continues this head of service, recalling that, moreover, the police forces involved arrested 1,250 thugs in flagrante delicto or with their arms loaded with stolen goods at the exit of metro or RER stations. No less than 850 of them were immediately placed in police custody, ten times more than a usual night in Paris, 400 of whom were referred to judicial services immediately under high tension.

After the fistfight that took place in the Assembly over the first reading of the budget, the government is counting on the proverbial responsibility of the Senate. Currently, the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) is debated in session by the elected representatives of the Upper House and the finance bill (PLF) is examined by the finance committee. The debates take place, as in past years, in a more peaceful climate than at the Palais Bourbon. In this context, the Minister of Public Accounts, David Amiel, begins to dream that the senators will improve his own copy: “I wish that we could have several billion euros of additional efforts at the end of this examination at first reading in the Senate,” he declared.

Two months after the deployment of an emergency plan of nearly 1.4 billion euros for farmers affected by the ravages of the heatwave, the government is tackling a second form of agricultural emergency. That of finally succeeding in adapting farms to accelerated climate change and stopping the hemorrhage of the French trade balance, which went from more than 11 billion euros in 2011, to a surplus of almost zero in 2025 (200 million euros). “The question is no longer how we give farmers prospects, no longer with a check or a subsidy, but to see if in a short time, farmers can initiate a revival of their investments,” summarized the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, on Thursday. Coming to present with the Minister of Agriculture, Annie Genevard, his agricultural recovery plan promised at the end of the summer, historically hot and dry, he clarified the contours of what should give agricultural France the means to produce.

“The government must take its responsibilities and must announce an extremely clear measure: the increase in the index point,” said Sophie Binet this Friday before a meeting of public service unions in Matignon to demand better salaries.

“And don’t let him come and tell us that it costs too much. Yes, there is no more money in the coffers because Emmanuel Macron emptied them. But yes, we know where to find the money,” added the general secretary of the CGT.

“This year, the government has chosen to reduce taxation for the largest companies by 2.5 billion euros,” she underlined. These 2.5 billion euros, for example, would be enough to increase the index point of civil servants.”

The necessary reduction in the public deficit makes some fear that the French economy, with sluggish growth, will suffer even more. Éric Coquerel, the president of the finance committee of the National Assembly, was outraged at the beginning of November that the budget copy presented by the government for 2027 included a “reduction in public spending with recessive effects”.

The LFI MP recommends instead “looking for revenue from the excess profits of multinationals”. His argument, however, raises many eyebrows. “We should be number one in growth, with our deficit at more than 5%,” laughs a very senior official. Not to mention that France already has spending 10 points of GDP higher than the European Union average and a level of compulsory deductions 5 points higher.

In a telegram sent Thursday to the prefects, Laurent Nuñez asks them “not to let down their guard” during this new day of mobilization “in the face of more fragmented or even sporadic phenomena whose level of violence does not decrease in intensity”. Concerning the use of police grenades, there are “no restrictions in principle on the means used but proportionate use in accordance with the legal and regulatory framework in force,” he recalls.