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France has long treated the street as a second parliament. Farmers, pensioners, taxi drivers and the Yellow Vests have all used it to force concessions from governments that would not listen inside the chamber. But the movement now shaking the country has a demographic profile that sets it apart from almost every one before it: it is being led by teenagers. And the state’s response to them has produced a crisis that reaches well beyond education policy, into the questions of proportionality, political will and the moral authority of a president in the twilight of his tenure.
A movement born in the classroom
The grievance at the heart of the protests is simple and widely shared. High school students across France, especially in the poorer suburbs of Paris and in struggling provincial towns, are demanding properly resourced schools. Their timing has given the cause unusual resonance. France is grappling with record levels of poverty alongside record public debt, a combination that has made fiscal austerity and social decay feel like two sides of the same coin. For many families, crumbling classrooms are the most visible symbol of a state that no longer delivers.
What began as school blockades and peaceful marches has, on many days, slid into confrontation. The scale is striking: around 8,000 people have been arrested in a matter of weeks, the overwhelming majority of them under 18. On the other side, the government reports that more than 900 police officers and over 150 teachers and school staff have been injured. These are not the figures of a contained disturbance. They describe a national rupture.
The arsenal question
The most combustible issue is the equipment France deploys against crowds. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has acknowledged that security forces used crowd-control weapons at least 18,000 times during the protests. Most of that was tear gas and smoke, but it also included projectiles and grenades, along with water cannons and riot shields fitted with blinding strobe lights.
One weapon in particular has become the emblem of the controversy: a deafening grenade fired from a launcher, which was used roughly 40 times before the minister suspended its use against high schoolers after a 15-year-old lost a hand. In a separate case, an officer suspected of firing a round that partially blinded a 16-year-old has been charged with aggravated violence. As of mid-October, 36 investigations into alleged police misconduct were open, four involving mutilating injuries and six involving significant injuries, with others ranging from beatings and insults to suspected sexual assault and an allegation that an officer tried to drown a protester.
The government’s defence rests on proportionality. Officials insist the rules on projectiles are strict and that officers avoid targeting anything above the neck. Yet the record of injuries to children makes that defence increasingly difficult to sustain in the court of public opinion.
This is not a new debate in France. During the Yellow Vest protests of 2018–2019, rubber-ball launchers left several demonstrators blinded in one eye, prompting France’s own human rights ombudsman to call for their suspension. During the 2023 pension reform protests, European and UN bodies raised alarms over French crowd-control methods. Experts have long noted that French riot police carry weapons that most European neighbours have abandoned or never adopted. What is new in 2026 is the age of those on the receiving end, and that changes the political arithmetic entirely.
Police against the government
Perhaps the most revealing development is that the criticism is no longer coming only from protesters and civil liberties groups. It is coming from inside the police.
The Alliance police union has filed a legal complaint against the state, accusing it of endangering officers’ lives through vague and contradictory orders. Union representatives describe ordinary public security officers, untrained in crowd control, being thrown into violent demonstrations simply to make up numbers. Some reportedly wear uniforms that are not flame-resistant while facing firework mortars, carry worn-out helmets and unsuitable shields, and lack authorisation to use the very tools meant to keep attackers at a distance. The result, by their own account, is more close-quarters confrontation and more injuries on both sides.
This internal revolt exposes a structural contradiction. France fields more than 250,000 police and gendarmes, one of the largest internal security forces in Europe, yet the officers themselves say they are under-equipped, under-trained and politically exposed. A force that is simultaneously heavily armed and poorly prepared is a recipe for precisely the kind of injuries now dominating French headlines. Specialists in French policing have warned that sending agitated, inexperienced officers into volatile crowds produces decisions driven by fear and anger rather than doctrine.
Selective firmness
A further dimension deserves attention. Sebastian Roché of France’s National Center for Scientific Research argues that the intensity of policing depends on how the government politically defines a movement. He points to the contrast with farmers, a powerful lobby, who in recent years dumped manure on government buildings, blocked roads and set fires, yet faced a notably gentler response than today’s teenagers.
If that assessment holds, the problem is not merely tactical but political. A state that calibrates force according to the electoral weight of protesters rather than the threat they pose undermines the principle of equal treatment that the French Republic claims as its foundation. Teenagers do not vote. Farmers do.
Macron’s unwanted coda
For President Emmanuel Macron, who leaves office in May, the timing could hardly be worse. His decade in power has been punctuated by protest waves: the Yellow Vests, the pension reform battles, the 2023 riots after the police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M. in Nanterre. Each has deepened a perception that his governments reach for the riot shield before the negotiating table. The school protests risk becoming the final chapter of that narrative, defining his legacy not by reform but by confrontation.
There is also a broader European lesson. Across the continent, governments are under strain from high debt, stagnant public services and a restless younger generation. Several countries have moved toward de-escalation models of protest policing that emphasise dialogue and communication. France has largely resisted that shift. The question now is whether an outgoing government has either the will or the political capital to change course, or whether it will leave the problem to its successor.
The way forward
Three steps would go a long way. First, a transparent and independent review of crowd-control weaponry, with permanent restrictions on munitions that cause mutilating injuries, particularly in demonstrations involving minors. Second, an end to deploying untrained officers into crowd-control roles, alongside proper protective equipment for those who are sent. Third, and most importantly, genuine engagement with the protesters’ underlying demand. Under-resourced schools are not a law-and-order problem. They are a governance problem, and no quantity of tear gas will resolve them.
France’s teenagers are asking their Republic for a better education. The Republic’s answer, so far, has too often come in the form of grenades. Unless that changes, the country risks teaching an entire generation a far more damaging lesson: that the state hears them only when they break something.
