Third day of national student protests in France. There are various marches and demonstrations throughout the country: the most important is that of Place de la République in Paris, where clashes occurred between demonstrators and the police. At least 256 thousand people demonstrated, of which 56 thousand in Paris for the Interior. The unions instead announce 450 thousand demonstrators across the country, of which 100 thousand in Paris. Meanwhile, President Macron has called a meeting at the Elysée to take stock with the ministers.
Scuffles were also reported in Lyon, where groups of very young people challenged the police in the streets near Place Guichard and were repelled with tear gas and water cannons. In Marseille and Strasbourg, however, a "wild" i.e. unauthorized procession started.
Returning to Paris, the prefecture announced that it had recorded the presence of a "pre-procession" of 300 "hostile" individuals. And he added that he had "contained this group of "antagonists up to the Place de la Nation".
"Our absolute priority is to protect students", declared the French Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray. Guaranteeing to "deal at this moment" with the demands of young people for a better school, the minister once again warned: at the moment, he pointed out, "215 students have been injured" since the beginning of the protests, "the vast majority due to violent individuals. In these cases we must stop those who endanger the lives of others".
At the National Assembly, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu also spoke of "85 members of school staff" who had suffered injuries. This toll is "the highest in the national school system in recent decades in terms of the number of injured civil servants", said the prime minister, who condemned a "trivialisation" of the violence, calling it "unacceptable". 715 gendarmes and police officers were also injured, many of them victims of insults and acts of intimidation.
Lecornu also announced the suspension of lessons in French high schools until the end of the week to organize a "moment of internal democracy" with students. The Minister of National Education Edouard Geffray "has decided to free up some time. Starting from tomorrow morning, from Thursday and Friday, the complete suspension of ordinary teaching activities is expected to dedicate a space to internal democracy within the high school", said the prime minister.
"We will not stop mobilizing until there are 10 billion on the table", the spokesperson of the Union Etudiante, Sabrine Kharbach, declared to BFMTV, recalling the demands of high school students and students in France. We ask to be able to "eat, sleep and have access to philosophy teachers in the final year, it is still the bare minimum", he said, adding: "We ask, above all, to stop with the contempt".
According to data from the Régions de France association, ''damages amounting to around 20 million euros'' have been estimated since the start of the student protests in France which began in September and which have then expanded to date, resulting in a more organized and national mobilization which has already included two days of national demonstrations, 29 September and 1 October.
The protests originally started at a school in Créteil, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, where students had joined their teachers to demand more resources and staff. The campaign, which began last September 17, has gone viral and has prompted students across France to join the call for government intervention against problems such as overcrowded classes, teacher absences and obsolete structures.
The leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) and 2027 presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon went to visit the students in the square in Paris. Prime Minister Lecornu accused LFI of pursuing the "political project" of "turning the country upside down" before the presidential elections and of "sowing chaos" since the beginning of the high school student movement. “The reality is that you are ambiguous about violence, because violence is part of your political project to destabilize the country.”
