Protests in France: "Living conditions are too harsh"

We begin here in France, where protests are underway across the country this Saturday. It brings together students, trade unionists and remnants of the Yellow Vest movement to demonstrate against the high cost of living, as well as working and studying conditions. It follows weeks of protests by high school pupils in Paris suburbs over poor infrastructure and teacher absences. After an unsuccessful meeting with France's education minister on Thursday, Protesters say they will not let up the pressure on the government. Well, let's hear first from a few people who are out in the streets today. We fight because living conditions are too harsh, because the cost of gas is too high, because high schoolers get, like, violent and hurt everywhere all over the country because they just try to protest and ask for, like, more teachers and decent conditions to learn in. and mostly it's like there's a lot of reasons and that's why we're here today it's clearly a good sign because it shows that a lot of support come from like a wide margin of the population so not only students but also people of everyday life who have job well we can now cross to speak to our reporter Antonia Kerrigan who's covering that story for us Antonia good afternoon to you First, tell us where you are and what's happening around you. Well, I'm at Place de la République, where the protest, the official march, the authorised march, is supposed to be leaving to head northwest in just the next few minutes. However, that prospect is unclear whether that's going to happen as planned, because for the last hour and a half, tensions have risen extremely high between police and protesters. We have seen that police have blocked entrances to the square for protesters. And in certain places, a CRS, that's the riot police, with their shield batons. And of course, use of tear gas, charging into the square and using tear gas to disperse protesters. Of course, it's complicated to disperse within what is such a confined space as a central Paris square. The tear gas has been used umpteen times. From what it sounds like, we believe stun grenades have been used. They were, of course, taken off the table during the last few weeks for the repression of the school students' protests, but they seem to be back on the table today. Certainly, the Minister for the Interior said they were allowed once again today, and we think we've heard them being used once again at Place de la République multiple times. The CRS police have charged inwards into the square from the neighbouring boulevard, Boulevard de l'Avenue de la République, for instance, kicking tear gas canisters towards protesters. We've seen protesters of all ages, young and actually rather elderly as well, running off to the edge of the square, trying to seek shelter with their eyes streaming. A lot of people did seem to head to this. They did bring masks. They did bring saline solution, which is widely being distributed among protesters. And of course, it's an extremely unpleasant experience when you inhale tear gas and, of course, when it hits your eyes. So that repression seems to be continuing. We understand that members of the France Unbowed radical left party are arriving at République soon, where we in order that the march may go ahead because of course the political presence at these events is one of the things that helps provide a framework that allows it and makes it a more manageable gathering however at this stage it's hard to tell if that's likely to be able to happen given the absolute chaos at République given the abundance of tear gas and the extremely high tension between protesters and police excuse me if my audio is slightly muffled that's my mask back on because the tear gas has reached where i'm standing all right thank you very much for that Antonio we'll let you go and get some shelter from that tear gas we're just seeing live images of the protests in the Place de la République that's in Paris meanwhile in the city of Marseille in the south the protesters briefly broke into the town hall protesters there said bins and electric scooters aligned this morning prompting intervention by riot police well of course be keeping a close eye on the situation as it unfolds in Marseille as well. Let's now get some context and analysis. And for that, we have Paul Smith joining us. He's a professor in French and Francophone studies at Nottingham University. Paul, a pleasure as always to have you on the program with us. We obviously have a lot to unpack here today, but first, how should we analyze this convergence of social grievances ranging from conditions in schools to the high cost of living. And are today's protests just about these issues or a wider loss of confidence in the government? Well, I think you're absolutely right that there's a wider sense of strain going in France, a sense of almost being on the brink that you've got the high school students and also students at university have been protesting over the last few weeks. And then a lot of the arguments that are underpinning this are also to do with, as you say, the cost of living. a lot of things are coming to the surface in the run-up to a presidential election next April and so you have a convergence of frustrations in some ways this also goes back to the uh pensions protests and the sense of you know that this is back on the table although the law has been suspended for now uh so a lot of different factors are feeding into this so it's not just about high school protests and cost of living protests but a lot of things feeding in there and we're seeing the live shots there of the violence between protesters in the Place de la République and the police. So a lot of different things underpinning this. And of course, the revival of the yellow vest movement of the pre-COVID times as well. So a lot of factors feeding this sense of frustration and anger. Paul, as you mentioned, a big part of today's anger also has to do with the police violence that we've seen during the high school protests and in those images that we're seeing live on our screen there now there are now some who you know say that France has become a police state would you go as far as to saying that well what we're seeing there is it's quite interesting listening to your correspondent earlier Antonia I think her name was that she was saying that they're waiting for the organizers for the march because the point about the the yellow vest movement and about some of the the lycée movement the high school students movement is that a lot of the protests have been and the marches have been spontaneous and not cleared with the authorities. Now, this one that was starting from Place de la République was supposed to be the authorised march and it seems to have got out of control. And we've seen already this morning, there have been a number of reports of where you've had groups of protesters turning up and spontaneously organising and then moving on. The police have gone in straight away to try and break that up. But they've done that with a level of violence, a level of aggression that we might not have anticipated. But, of course, we've seen a lot of police brutality, state violence towards protesters over the last few weeks. So we might not be completely surprised by it. certainly the Minister of the Interior was talking a tough game this week about how, yes, we would allow organised protests to take place, although some of those haven't been approved. The routes haven't been fully approved. So there's a bit of a standoff still going on. But as we can see here, if there's the slightest suggestion that these are not the official marches, then the police appear to be going straight in and breaking things up. I was reading a report of one in Lyon this morning for example. Right now let's talk a bit about the context Paul because today's protests were called as you mentioned by the yellow vests the movement of course first emerged around you know purchasing power and fuel costs in 2018 but what's changed in people's lives since then and do you see today's protests as very different to the ones we saw years ago? Well I think in some ways I think the reason that the yellow vests have got involved is because what they're saying is that things haven't changed. That since the Yellow Vest movement of 2018, 2019, that actually the same underlying problems are there. Of course, there are problems that have developed in the last 10 years under the Macron presidency, the state of French schools. And we've seen scenes of the state of the buildings, but also the situation with one of the things that young people are upset about is their prospects. So there's this kind of general sense that we've had 10 years of Emmanuel Macron and his promises to make things better. And that hasn't happened. So there's kind of a sense of almost we're almost circling back to where we were nearly 10 years ago, 2018, 2019. So what has the Macron administration then failed to understand so far? Are there no lessons that it's drawn from the past? I think it's tended to, the problem is that it's tended to, for example, the response to the Yellow Vest Movement was to set up the big national debate, the Grand Débat National, where it was going to listen to the people. And although some things were done, they weren't really effective enough. And they didn't show the people, the French public, that actually things had shifted. And then you can put in all other kinds. It's very interesting reading the various responses to this. So some candidates in the presidential election talk about, yes, we need to reorganize French education. Well, you know, you've been in power for a few years, You were prime minister during the Yellow Vest movement. Did you not anticipate this this coming? And so all of these that there's this sense that, yes, there were there were these processes. There was the as I say, the big national debate, but it was controlled in such a way and so vertical in the way that it was carried out. rather than being bottom up and listening that that that kind of facade if you like of listening to the French people has not yielded results and the French people feel that they are still exactly where they were they might not be materially if they sit down and look at things but they feel that they're exactly where they were and the cost of living the cost of you talked about fuel prices going up back in 2018 2019 or fuel duties sorry well it's fuel prices again and whether it's duties or prices, and whether it's Macron's fault or the fault of somebody else who's having a war in the Strait of Hormuz, doesn't really matter to the French consumer. They're paying a very high price for particularly diesel at the fuel pump. And that's, you know, that has, those problems haven't been resolved. So there are lots of layers to this. Yeah, so it's a lot of pent-up anger we're seeing in France today, you're saying, Paul. It's, you know, the anger is palpable in the live images that we're seeing on the screen there. We're seeing people chanting, tout le monde déteste la police, which is the French for everyone hates the police. I mean, it's now snowballed, obviously, into a combination of different factors, as you were saying. So with this reality, is dialogue even possible in today's France? It seems very difficult, doesn't it? Particularly since 2024, since the dissolution of Parliament, the new elections, where there's this very fragmented political situation. and um and so that's kind of broken down that there's the the government is there on the one hand but it doesn't really have a a popular mandate it's finding it very difficult to to pull a kind of moderate opinion together so it's being pulled in the uh pulled in in different directions it's trying to be moderate but you've got the two extremes pulling in their different directions earlier on uh France Unbowed was mentioned but also the the the national rally so trying to find that consensus is very difficult and there's just a sense that uh that a nobody's listening but it's difficult to know who exactly we're supposed to talk to where the dialogue takes place and of course traditionally it was trade unions and uh who would have that dialogue but endlessly they've found that the the space for dialogue with the government has not been terribly fruitful so it's actually very difficult to to see how just as it was with the with the yellow vest because the yellow vest movement didn't have a structure it's very difficult to know where that dialogue takes place and how you calm down the situation of course some people don't want it to calm down that's that's also the problem that the the authorities have to deal with so then what kind of response by the government would satisfy these protesters i mean both the high school pupils that are out in the streets today but also you know ordinary workers who have been saying for years now that nothing has been done to ameliorate the standards of living in France. Yes, I mean, going back to the question of fuel prices, for example, the government might try to do something there, but where do you find the money from? Because as the French would say, les caisses sont vides, you know, the coffers are empty. So what can you do in order to facilitate? Well, the government's tried a kind of process of vouchers, so people on particularly low incomes who need to use their cars a lot can can apply for grants but that's that's not really a kind of a universal you know people don't see though those things happening uh at the pump but also for the um basically the students student leaders the high school student and and student leaders have said that they they won't talk to the education minister anymore the person they want to talk to is the prime minister now it depends it's really up to Le Cornu it's up to him whether he's going to negotiate with them so it's very difficult at this moment and i i kind of i can kind of hear myself during the the yellow vest uh crisis as well thinking it's very difficult to see how we pacify this situation if if it is because the response at the moment simply seems to be to send in the police we've got a water cannon there on screen now that's that's really heavy artillery and this is uh and there was talk wasn't there of using stun grenades as well as tear gas, this is really high level police repression, or state repression. The police are being asked to do a thing by the state, and it's the state that's doing this. Now, we have to talk about the fact that all this comes, of course, ahead of next April's presidential election. Now, in this context, how do you see this movement affecting the different political factions? I mean, could it strengthen the far right or the hard left, or perhaps instead deepen voters' rejection of established parties altogether? I think it works for both of them, to be honest with you. I think, on the one hand, La France Insoumise, France Unbowed, the far left, sees itself as being the party of young voters. Now, of course, most high school students aren't yet 18, so they wouldn't vote, but voters 18 to 25 massively tend to vote for France Unbowed, for Mélenchon's party, and they will say that this is you know this is a generational thing we have to change society so that our young people most french people by the way actually accept the they don't accept the violence but they agree with the with the problems they say we recognize that there are problems there's a big generational crisis which isn't limited to France, we're talking about the same thing here in the UK so the left will talk about this as being, come on, this is symbolic of society that needs fundamental change, whereas of course on the far right the way that they will instrumentalize this is is to kind of do the uh they'll do it by ellipsis, they won't say it quite so directly but they'll say that, look at those people who are who are demonstrating, you know we'll give the police the real power to do what they need to do and they'll point the finger at certain communities and they'll play on that uh that kind of uh that sense of insecurity that lack of safety in order to bolster their position and both sides will pull and there are voters who are not yet for example national rally voters who might think actually you know we agree with with the students about their the conditions but um we also agree with the National Rally that we need to be you know there needs to be this kind of security uh process as well so i think those two extremes can can benefit from the situation and it's the center that falls down the middle unfortunately in a society that needs a bit of calm and moderation, all right Paul, we're going to leave it there but thank you as always for your context and analysis, we value that very much here on France 24 for viewers joining us just now just a reminder that we are seeing live images there on your screen of protests that are taking place today nationwide in Paris, Nantes, Lille and several other cities as well against the rising cost of living and the working and studying conditions here in France. We'll of course be covering that throughout the day for you.