Over the past month, France has seen a wave of student demonstrations, culminating in a nationwide day of record-breaking protests on Saturday, October 17.
The demonstrations started in September in the suburbs of Paris, where high school students barricaded the entrances to their schools in protest of crumbling infrastructure, inadequate teacher-student ratios, and high workloads. These protests were met with disproportionate force by police, with teenagers as young as 14 being maimed by police grenades.
Demonstrations quickly spread throughout the country, with high schoolers being joined by university students and labor unions. With the addition of these groups, protests evolved to additionally address increased costs of living and spiking fuel prices across the nation.
October 17 marked the largest day of protests since the movement began in September, with around 800,000 people demonstrating across the country. While some of these demonstrations were peaceful, around 3,000 businesses around the country were vandalized or destroyed by rioters, and in the town of Limoges, the 19th-century city hall collapsed in flames.
In the aftermath of the riots, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation, saying that “nothing justifies” the "unbridled violence” seen across the nation. Around 2,400 people were arrested as a result of these riots, and several major French cities such as Paris, Marseille, and Lyon have imposed curfews and/or bans on large gatherings in the wake of these protests.
With French presidential elections on the horizon in 2027, the state of unrest across the nation will likely play a key role in shaping election outcomes. Considering the irrelevance of the center-right and center-left parties following Macron’s 2017 victory and the shift away from Macron’s centrist party throughout his presidency, the candidacy now rests between two extremes: far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise) and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (Rassemblement National).
With Macron on his way out of office and an increase in far-right sentiment across Europe at large, Le Pen has used the protests across the nation as a campaigning strategy, positioning her candidacy as a “[restoration of] authority and security.” Meanwhile, Mélenchon has taken the approach of vocally sympathizing with the protesters, and while this could garner electoral support from the demonstrators themselves, Mélenchon also risks aligning himself with the violence and destruction brought on by the protests, as well.