French government concessions to students 'tactically shrewd' but risk creating new set of problems

And for more on the current protests in France and the government response to them, I can welcome Oliver Davies, Professor of French and Head of the French Department at University College Cork. Good morning, Oliver, and thank you very much for joining us. Sébastien Le Cornu's government made some overtures to address students' grievances yesterday, but that's unlikely to put an end to the protests. Good morning. Yes, it is unlikely to, although there is some tactical advantage in making these series of concessions, which are concrete and in a way substantial, because the government was under pressure to be seen not just to be listening in the kind of strict sense, but also to to respond to the students demands. And they can say they have now done so. I think it's worth underlining that these measures really scratch the surface. So an increase in 15,000 university places, that's about an increase of 2%. Similarly, the 500 school teachers, lycée teachers, lycée level teachers, that is less than 1% increase. It's very unlikely that there will be tangible benefits for this generation and future generations of school students from those increases in themselves. But there is tactical advantage to doing this in the sense that now in the budget debates in the Assemblée, it's possible for the government to say to those who are opposing the budget, Well, you know, if you carry on opposing the budget, then actually you're opposing us granting these ameliorative measures to the lycée students. Now, the protests began a month ago with the secondary school students protesting classroom conditions, but they've now snowballed into a tangle of other grievances. That's correct. There were there were a number of a number of grievances raised and the introduction of the kind of online portal that the government put in place to a kind of online cahier de douliance, if you like, to use that kind of revolutionary analogy, gathered a large number of objections. So including Parcoursup, so the digital platform that's used to allocate university places, that was a big bone of contention. And they have gained some concessions on that. So it's going to be reformed for the current year, for 2027, and then in principle replaced in 2028. Although, of course, that's in a sense sort of passing the buck to the next administration. There were other grievances as well around the kind of length of the school day, but also the kind of way in which classes were spaced out over the school day, which really stem from the 2018 reforms to the baccalaureate and the kind of consequences of those of those reforms. So they will need to be rethought over the medium to longer term because that's a that's a significant problem to to address. So so there have been some some concessions on some of the the other issues that were that were concerning the DSE students. And it does look as though at least as well, we saw from the clip you showed before I came on that at least some of the representatives of the DSE students are are pleased with what's been announced. Now, it's not just the secondary school students who are protesting now as well. There are also unions and the Yellow Vests protesting against the high cost of living. And the violence of the October 17th riots shocked France, but they don't seem to have appeared to have put a dent in the protest movement or indeed in popular support for it. That's right. So the 24th, so the demonstrations over this last weekend on Saturday They were, of course, much better handled from a government and policing perspective, although they were only handled better really by the introduction of not just kind of larger policing numbers, but also localised measures like localised curfews, changes, last minute changes to the routes of processions and various other measures that are kind of at the sharpest end of the kind of toolbox available to government to to control demonstrations um yeah so i don't think um you know the protests were less violent over this weekend but i think it's worth bearing in mind you know we've got at least five uh demonstrations as it were scheduled in between now and the the 4th of december and each time there is a new uh demonstration the police Obviously, the policing forces are human beings as well, and they get tired, they get fed up, and they know these are high-stakes policing operations. So I think with each new demonstration, the potential for mistakes to happen increases, so there's a kind of cumulative risk there. Now, you mentioned earlier a strategic win for the government in granting those concessions yesterday, But the French government's response to the protests so far has not been particularly nimble. Do you think that perhaps they dragged their fees a little bit too much? I think there's been a degree of tactical confusion. That's how I read the situation. It's a bit like in the early days of the Gilets Jaunes protests. And I'm talking about the kind of the first round of the Gilets Jaunes protests, as it were, in 2017. So I think there's a bit of confusion. We've seen different kinds of messaging from the government. I mean, I was particularly interested to hear Emmanuel Macron's remarks in Marseille, where he said, well, you know, we've managed to maintain the republic today without the use of a state of emergency. And I think the word today was really significant. It indicates and signals perhaps that it's not off the cards that a state of emergency will will be introduced. I mean, the difficulty with the kind of measures that have been, even if they're kind of small concessions to the LSE students, the difficulty for the government, of course, is that other groups now will expect and demand concessions in their cases. And when you add all that together, it's very difficult to grant all of that while also reducing the size of the overall budget in the way that the local new government wants to do. So in a way, it's tactically true, but also it creates other problems. Now, of course, this government is nearing its end with presidential elections coming up in April. Marine Le Pen has enjoyed a boost in the polls since the riots on October 17th, and she looks set to top the poll in the first round of the election at the very least. But is her benefiting from the protests from here on in an inevitability? I don't think it is. A lot of the kind of commentary have been saying this is a kind of, you know, a sort of silent victory for Marine Le Pen and the kind of silent majority that supports her, which I think is a kind of over extrapolation from the kind of end of May 68 and other kind of moments in in relatively recent French history. So it's worth bearing in mind that, you know, the national rally proposals for the budget are, in fact, to kind of cut more, more steeply than the Le Pen government has proposed, albeit over a slightly longer time frame. I think also, you know, it is looking likely probably that in the second round, it will be a Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon runoff. And at that point, you know, the kind of the centrists and the socialists in particular will have to decide what they really want. Thank you very much for that, Oliver Davis, Professor of French and Head of the French Department at University College Cork.