By Makini Brice and Dominique Vidalon
PARIS, Oct 9 (Reuters) – French student unions vowed on Friday to keep up protests after scoring their first win in a campaign that is increasingly supported by Paris’s elite universities, with 141 schools still shut around the country, according to the education ministry.
The protests, now in their third week, have snowballed into a wider movement, with some university students weighing in to express their anger over what they call a dysfunctional system, worsened by spending cuts spurred by France’s budget crunch.
The unrest poses a challenge for the government, which must balance demands for more education spending with the need to rein in public debt, and risks rekindling the kind of street protests that have historically forced French leaders to retreat on austerity measures. Student and teacher unions have called for another round of nationwide school strikes next Tuesday.
Police cleared a blockade at Assas university, France’s top law school, in central Paris on Friday morning, BFM TV showed. Nearby, elite engineering school Mines Paris was also disrupted by blockades.
The Institut Catholique, a private university known for being particularly conservative, said on its website it would switch to remote classes due to a blockade of its campus.
Student unions hailed what they see as their first real win, after the government late on Thursday pledged to send some 3,000 teachers, who are fully qualified but have not yet started work, to fill staffing gaps, one of the protesters’ main grievances.
That concession shows it is worthwhile for the students to continue their protests, Marius Mesnil, from a high school student union, told Franceinfo radio.
“I find it crazy we need to block hundreds of high schools just to get a vacancy plan,” he added.
The measure is effective immediately and will cost “several dozen million euros”, Education Minister Edouard Geffray told broadcaster TF1.
MARKETS MONITORING GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PROTESTS
Investors are closely watching the government’s next moves in a highly indebted country where street anger has often been tamed with more state spending. This time, France’s gigantic pension outlays and its need to rein in public spending leave little room for manoeuvre.
Stephane Boujnah, the head of Euronext, which runs the Paris stock market, said Paris urgently needed to make tough choices to bring down its debt, which he said was of particular interest for younger generations.
“What sacrifice are we asking of our own children? Because we’re going to leave them with a complicated situation, and if we want them to be able to make their own choices — if we want to solve the problem for high school students — well, maybe we need to spend a little less on pensions so that we have a little more money for the children,” he told RMC radio.
Nearly 10% of teaching hours are unstaffed at French state high schools, according to education ministry figures, prompting a growing number of wealthier parents to abandon the public sector in favour of private schooling.
The interior ministry said 71,500 people took to the streets in Paris and elsewhere on Thursday. While most protests were peaceful, violence has increased in some places.
A fire broke out at a school in the western city of Poitiers, the ministry said, adding there were some other instances of vandalism and attacks against education staff throughout the country.
The unrest has not been limited to France.
In Belgium, two large labour unions were staging a national strike on Friday, impacting public transport, schools and air traffic, to protest against planned government budget cuts and the overall rising cost of living.
Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to gather in Brussels for a large demonstration later on Friday.
(reporting by Makini Brice and Dominique Vidalon in Paris, Bart Maijer in Amsterdam, writing by Tassilo Hummel, editing by Gareth Jones)
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