A protester waving a French national flag walks past a fire during clashes prior to the demonstration in Marseille, southern France, on Oct. 17, 2026.
A second wave of protests against the high cost of living and inadequate public services swept across France last weekend, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in major cities such as Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Nantes.
While heightened security measures and new restrictions prevented the large-scale unrest seen during the initial wave of protests two weeks ago, clashes between police and demonstrators still occurred.
"If there is a wider context driving events in France today, it is the twilight of Macronism, the collapse of his political project and the strength of feeling against the President at the end of a decade in power," noted Christopher Bickerton, Professor in Modern European Politics at POLIS and an Official Fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge University, in an exclusive interview with South recently.
Gen Z's protest for better education in France
The protests in France that started in late September have been led by secondary school students, with university students joining in recent weeks.
The focus of the students' complaints, in Bickerton's eyes, was specific. They complained about large numbers of students in classes, many teachers missing lessons as replacement teachers could not be found to fill empty posts, and the declining quality of the infrastructure in schools: no toilet paper in the toilets or toilets closed all day, for instance.
Above all, these students are preoccupied with the university selection system, Parcoursup, an online system which integrates all the students' exam results and other information and determines their entry to university.
"It is criticized for being too opaque," Bickerton argued. Some believed that it was an algorithm that determined a student's entry. There are in fact commissions of professors who are involved in the decision-making but students rarely see this.
A move in recent years to regular examinations, rather than waiting until the final pre-university exam, the Baccalaureate, has led students to complain of stress.
"They feel as if their future is being determined early on. Any slip-up in these continuing examinations will have a negative impact on them," Bickerton added.
According to him, the government should address student grievances and could abolish Parcoursup immediately, with a promise to put in place a more transparent and humane admissions system for universities.
But one difficulty lingered, as Bickerton observed: the government at the moment is seeking to introduce a cost-cutting budget. "This is perhaps the principal difficulty facing any resolution of the crisis."
Relentless protests against Emmanuel Macron
From the Yellow Vests movement that started in November 2018 against the persistent rise in fuel prices and the Macron administration's hike in fuel taxes to a series of protests that began in January 2023 organized by opponents of the pension reform bill to increase the retirement age, Emmanuel Macron has weathered rounds of protests over the higher cost of living in France.
Data released by the European Commission shows that, by the end of 2025, France's public debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 115.6 percent. In mid-September, the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance stated that France's public debt-to-GDP ratio is continuing to climb, with projections reaching 119.3 percent in 2026 and rising further to 121.7 percent in 2027.
Bickerton detailed the differences among the Yellow Vest protests, the current protests and others.
French protest movements in the past tended to involve large organizations like student or trade unions leading from the front as many hundreds of thousands of people walked behind, chanting, following the cortège of protesters, which is organized, under clearly identified banners.
The Yellow Vest movement was very different, in his view. It was socially protean and leaderless, seeming to express discontent and rage rather than issuing any specific demands.
"These protests by students have some of the same leaderless aspects to them," Bickerton noted.
The violence of October 17 was a product of multiple and disparate groups of young people across many cities in France, disorganized, without any connection to each other really, with some aiming to destroy what they could while others focused on communicating a message.
Also, he pointed to a common sentiment among the French that the cost of living was out of control, and to social media's role in mobilizing people even without the need for organizations and leadership.
It is likely to boost support for the far-right or centre-right in the French presidential election
Amid the protests of recent weeks, the yield on France's 10-year government bond broke above 5 percent during intraday trading on October 21, marking the first time it had reached such a level since 2002, a sign of market anxiety.
A recent article in the French newspaper Le Monde has pointed out that the rise of political parties at both ends of the spectrum, coupled with the weakening of traditional mainstream parties and the inability of the centrist camp to establish a stable force, has exacerbated social divisions, making public sentiment increasingly prone to confrontation and conflict.
Given this political polarization, it is hard to say what the consequences will be for the presidential campaign in the next six months, Bickerton said.
There has been a lot of criticism by the political parties of what they see as the strategy of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party to encourage the protests. They call this instrumentalization, he explained.
"It may be that this has some impact and people associate the violence and burning of cars and buildings with far-left agitation, in which case it is likely to boost the voters for the far right or centre right. Most probably, the far-right National Rally (RN) party," Bickerton stated.
However, he was still cautious, adding that the situation was uncertain and much could happen in the next six months or so.
Reporter | Ruijun Zhang
Photo | CFP
