Protests In France Are Becoming Increasingly Violent. Demonstrations Have Now Spread To Other European Countries.

Clashes between riot police and protestors became a common sight in the French capital of Paris and elsewhere in the country on Saturday, as protests which began in mid-September over anger with the French education system continue to grow in scope and frequency.

According to the French Ministry of Interior, over half a million joined the demonstrations, and French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that 1,200 people had been arrested and 150 police officers had been injured.

In some areas, protests descended into looting and rioting. Shops were looted in Paris, Marseille, Nice, Nantes, Bordeaux, Limoges, Lille, Toulouse and Strasbourg, the French news agency AFP reported.

A fire lighted by protestors in Limoges, a city in southwest-central France, largely destroyed a 140-year old town hall, with videos showing the building’s spire collapsing as it is engulfed by flames.

“No room for violence in our Republic. Those who have broken, attacked the prefectures as well as businesses, looted even our town halls, will be prosecuted and punished … we will all stand united against the sowers of chaos, who seek only to bring down our institutions and prevent those who peacefully express their demands from doing so,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X on Saturday.

Hundreds of protestors have also been injured at the hands of police during the waves of protests. On October 5 a 15-year old boy’s hand was blown off in Lens after a police stun grenade detonated; a local police union source alleged that the boy picked the grenade up before it exploded, but an eyewitness quoted in regional newspaper La Voix Du Nord contradicted this claim.

Ishaan Dasgupta, a 24-year old British student currently attending the French public research university Sciences Po in Paris, spoke to International Business Times about the protests.

“The huge protest that happened yesterday was a culmination of collective anger, mostly driven by cost of living. As we’ve seen plenty of times in France, it was a peaceful protest with some more violent actors.”

“There was rioting, shops getting looted … but it [the protest] was characterized by heavy police actions … yesterday, I was tear gassed. I didn’t take part in the protest … yesterday on the metro they [the French police] deployed tear gas. I was just on my way home,” the British student said.

France was not the only European nation gripped by protests on Saturday; unrest was also reported in Belgium, Italy and Portugal. In Brussels, police used tear gas and water cannon to scatter the protestors. In Lisbon, tens of thousands took to the streets to protest rising cost of living and surging house prices.

In Milan, 50 people were arrested and 25 injured – amongst them up to 10 police officers- after clashes between protestors and riot police near the central Piazza del Duomo, according to Italian news agency LaPresse.

What are the protests about?

The protests in France began on September 17 in the Parisian suburb of Creteil, when high school students at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry took to the streets to protest the teacher shortages, poor facilities and educational decline that plagued their school.

School and university students from hundreds of French institutions were soon staging similar protests, and the demonstrators enjoyed the backing of many parents, trade unions and teachers. Nationwide, an estimated 10 to 20% of school buildings are considered to be in need of renovation and, according to data from the French education ministry, nearly 10% of teaching hours in public high schools went untaught in the 2024-2025 academic year.

The student movement expanded into an intergenerational one as youth concerns about the education system intersected with rising public anger at the cost of living, as French fuel prices and inflation continue to surge. French year-on-year inflation hit 3.4% in September, its highest level since January 2024.

Large-scale protests are commonplace in France, and the current demonstrators enjoy the support of key figures of the “yellow vest” movement. The movement, whose members regularly wore high-visibility yellow safety vests to demonstrations, staged huge protests in France between 2018 and 2020, driven by rising living costs and anger at inequality.

Some in the French government, however, allege that the protests are being manipulated for political ends before next year’s French presidential elections, due to be held in April 2027.

“Ultraleft groups have orchestrated violence in several French cities; delinquents have joined in to pillage and destroy,”French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu claimed on Saturday.

“To those who clearly want to use these acts of violence as a “warm-up” before the presidential election, I say this plainly: we will not be intimidated. No one will impose their political agenda through violence,” Lecornu continued.

Lecornu later attacked far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon on this basis on X, accusing the latter of providing excuses for those who commit violence, although Mélenchon explicitly disavowed any “looting” or “pillaging” committed by protestors.

Although the different national protests were uncoordinated, many of the protestors outside of France appeared to share similar cost-of-living-related grievances. Protestors in Portugal were venting their frustration at rising Portuguese house prices, which have more than doubled since 2017, whereas Belgium has seen weeks of protests because of higher university registration fees.

Italy’s protests were also largely attributed to higher cost of living; Italian inflation hit a three-year high of 4.2% in September.