Police and protesters face off in Albania on third day of anti-govt demonstrations

So for more on what lies ahead, we'll speak to Philip Terrell now, our international affairs editor with me on set. Hi, Philip. Widespread anger then amongst students, not only about poor learning conditions, but also what they see as rampant government corruption in Albania. Yeah, let's break this down into two different lots, shall we? The first one is about these poor university conditions. They say basically they've got high education costs, which many of them can't afford to meet. They need financial support, which they're not getting. The employment prospects after graduation are not good. And they just need the government to move in to improve the situation. There have been protests not only in Tirana, the capital, but in other towns around the country. 51 police injured so far, 65 people arrested in protests in Tirana yesterday. And this is all linked to a more widespread protest in the country of feeling that the government isn't listening. the government of Edi Rama who they've called him to to stand down uh saying he's not listening and on top of that this is a corrupt government that is making money on uh the sidelines uh to the detriment of Albania and i'll give you just one example of that there's a proposed development of a luxury resort along Albania's southern coast this pristine uh southern coast in in the south of Albania which has been backed by Donald Trump uh his and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who's been caught up in legal disputes. And I think part of these protests came to a head when there was anger over the clearing of land, which is protected under areas which are deemed to be non-constructible around the coastal area. Many of the protesters are saying this is the final straw. We are living with one of the most corrupt governments in history. That's why we're taking to the streets. And incidentally, we need better conditions for education. We need to be able to build a new future. Well, the reaction from the prime minister to all this has been, well, I'm certainly not standing down, as you were saying in your intro. And the second thing is he's not going to allow the violence to derail what he says is Albania's goal of joining the European Union. So I think we're face to face with a big standoff. It doesn't show no signs yet that this could be finding any way forward anytime soon. And we are seeing live pictures there behind you, Philip, of those protests in the capital of Tirana today. As we see those images, it's probably worth asking whether a parallel could be drawn with what we're seeing happening here in France. Well, certainly, I think there is a parallel. You can see from these images that we've been showing over the past few days here in France, there's a lot of similarity between what's going on in Albania and what's going on here in France at the moment. The France high school students are blocking uh the schools because they want more teachers they want better conditions they want classrooms that are uh not falling down they want proper uh supplies better food at school all sorts of things that they say have been uh abandoned over the past few years and uh they they say that the hours they do they have to be at school sometimes at eight in the morning and they stay until six in the evening it's too much they can't concentrate and there's also a clearing system uh when school ends off the baccalaureate to allow students to go to university which they say is totally inefficient not working properly and they want that to be scrapped it's altogether so so uh we've had weeks of protests a big day of protests on tuesday more protests which are uh planned for the weeks to come this is a real head uh difficulty for the government because in in the case of normal protests it would be over a piece of legislation in which the government can say, OK, we'll take this legislation away and that will end the protest. This is years and years of work, investment in schools, universities, to bring them up to scratch, which can't be effected in just five minutes. On top of that, we have an election coming up in France next year, a presidential election. So the far left and the far right have been jumping on this to say this is all part of Emmanuel Macron's incapacity to have run the country properly over the past 10 years. And they're orchestrating this, using it to try to swing support in favour of their own party. For example, on the left, on the far left, the far left, France Insoumise Party is saying, well, violence can be justified in some cases. That was a message from Mathilde Panot, the mayor of Saint-Denis in northern Paris, which the government is criticising, saying no violence should be used in protests. The far right National Rally has been saying, well, they will protect the police. The police are right to be violent if they have to be because of some of these protests being orchestrated by those who have nothing to do with schools and just want to cause trouble. So it's a much bigger issue which the government is having to come to terms with and try to sort out and really not much at their fingertips because France has a huge public debt of 3.3 trillion euros. They've announced 3,000 relief teachers to be brought into schools. Many saying, well, why didn't you do this before? So no solution in sight either for the protests here in France in the short term. and that is a very worrying prospect for the French government right now. Philip Turrell, indeed, especially looking forward towards Saturday, of course, the next major installment of that ongoing protest movement. Thank you very much.