France is gearing up for another round of anti-austerity mobilizations on Saturday, October 31. As the weekend approaches, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu have still not substantially addressed the protest demands tabled by the student movement. 

For the past weeks, students and their organizations have taken to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, denouncing the state of the education sector, including overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, and dilapidated buildings. Authorities have responded with a full-blown crackdown – police violence, curfews, and protest bans – while avoiding meaningful conversation about the protests’ causes.

“The authorities’ top priority is to strip the movement of the political meaning it carries: the condemnation of the neoliberal policy that has ruined the French education system,” presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon pointed out in a recent interview. “Young people are pulling at the thread of a larger unraveling.”

Government tried to break student unity

Lecornu and his ministers called a meeting with high school and university student groups on Monday, announcing the government was ready to open dialogue on their demands. Yet even before the meetings kicked off, a list of government-proposed measures published by the media only fueled frustration. 

These measures included a transparency-oriented reform of the higher education recruitment platform Parcoursup, the creation of 15,000 additional higher education placements, low-interest loans to regional authorities for renovating school infrastructure, and the indexation of grants to inflation.

Read more: Students in France are fighting for stronger public education

Students criticized the officials for attempting to set a negotiation agenda before even speaking to them. They also called them out for trying to break their unity by organizing separate meetings with different groups instead of a joint discussion. In this process, they emphasized, crucial voices were left out. 

Among others, the Fédération Lycéenne des Quartiers (FLQ), representing high school students from working-class neighborhoods – the demographic group from which the protest wave originated – was not invited to meet Lecornu. Students interpreted this as yet another sign of the government’s failure to grasp what is at stake. “They see us first and foremost as ‘young people from the banlieues,’ rather than young people who, like everyone else, want to make their voices heard,” FLQ’s Soumaya Sarré told Mediapart. 

“Crumbs” instead of solutions

The way meetings were set up was not the only problem. Following the publication of the government’s proposals, the university students’ association Union Étudiante described them as “crumbs” and detailed how they fail to address the movement’s concerns. 

“There are not 15,000 places missing but at least 250,000,” the organization warned. “Where are those 250,000 places needed for young people who have been denied their right to education because of classist and racist selection?” 

Union Étudiante similarly criticized the lack of clarity surrounding proposed financing for infrastructure investment, employment plans, and the promise to “reform” rather than abolish Parcoursup. 

This last demand has become emblematic for the student movement over the past weeks of protest. Young people on the streets have repeatedly explained how the tool allows university selection to maintain racist and classist tones – all while pushing tens of thousands of students without placements toward the private sector. 

“We are not asking for a reform that offers more transparency or clarity; we already know how the selection process works, and it will remain unjust even if the selection criteria are made public,” Union Étudiante wrote. “The problem is selection itself. Why should young people be denied the right to pursue higher education? We must abolish all forms of selection while keeping a centralized platform for enrolling in academic programs.” 

Mobilizations against racism and the far right

Trade unions and progressive organizations continue to support the students ahead of Saturday’s demonstrations, while building toward a general strike on November 5. The networks remain connected over shared austerity-related problems, linking budget cuts in public services, attacks on pensions, and precarious working conditions. 

In between regular nationwide mobilizations, the past few days have also seen significant protests against racism and the far right. After a racist attack in the Trappes working-class suburb of Paris last Friday – where one person was killed and five, including a 12-year-old, were seriously injured – calls are circulating for solidarity assemblies. 

“This crime did not come out of nowhere,” wrote Saint-Denis mayor Bally Bagayoko. “For years, the perpetrator blamed ‘Black people and Arabs’ for all his misfortunes.”

“He claimed he wanted to avenge a looting that never actually happened – a piece of false information broadcast on television,” he added.

“This hatred has its architects: those who, hour after hour on the airwaves, designate our neighborhoods as the problem and ‘the other’ as a threat.”

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The far-right National Rally – whose program ahead of the 2027 presidential election endorses exactly this vision of “the other” – held its congress in Orléans over the October 24-25 weekend. Approximately 26,000 people joined a local march against the policies endorsed by the party, signaling continuous resistance in the lead-up to the April 2027 presidential election.

Hundreds of thousands are set to take to the streets in cities across France on Saturday, October 24, once again protesting austerity and the cost of living crisis. Demonstrations are set to go ahead despite an extremely repressive response from the government and local authorities, including curfews and bans.

Over the past couple of days, a growing number of cities and regions have announced protest bans, drawing criticism from trade unions and progressive groups. “The government has banned demonstrations on Saturday in Lyon, Marseille, Rouen, Grenoble, Le Havre, Bourg-en-Bresse, Le Mans, Toulon, Chambéry, Perpignan,” wrote Clémence Guetté of La France Insoumise on October 22. “New bans are coming down every hour. Is this what democracy looks like?”

Many of the bans are being contested in court, with the final outcome yet to be determined.

Read more: Italian government to deploy troops to Milan after anti-austerity protests

French President Emmanuel Macron failed to revise his stance on the protests in the same period, announcing that only trade union mobilizations will be allowed on Saturday. “Where they are not organized by trade unions, we will ban them wherever we can,” Macron stated.

The government announced the intention of deploying troops to “guard” the demonstrations. The idea was announced after nationwide protests on October 17 – attended by roughly 800,000 people – turned into riots against the erosion of education services and overall living standards.

A securitization strategy tested in Kanaky

This institutional response has been heavily criticized by progressive forces that joined students on the streets. As Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s administration insisted on framing the mobilization exclusively as a security issue, including in meetings with political parties, left forces denounced the strategy for failing to address concrete issues.

Paul Vannier of La France Insoumise said the government was engaging in “a strategy of letting the situation rot,” insisting that it should instead shape a solution to students’ demands. This would include freezing prices, increasing wages, making higher education more accessible, and allocating €10 billion for the education system.

Read more: Students in France are fighting for stronger public education

The French left has also sounded the alarm about the long-term consequences of the violent repression of the protests: thousands of youth were arrested during the mobilization, and dozens were injured – some of them very seriously.

While alarming, this course of events is not surprising, La France Insoumise pointed out. The party compared the repression observed in French cities to the one witnessed during protests in Kanaky in 2024: “a state of emergency, extended curfews, a general ban on demonstrations, the blocking of TikTok, nearly 3,000 security personnel deployed with army support, armored vehicles, and the massive use of LBD launchers and grenades.”

“What the state tested in 2024 in Kanaky, it is now applying in 2026 to its own youth, with the same men in charge,” the media outlet L’Insoumission wrote.

Trade unions’ support continues

It is in this context that progressive forces in France have reiterated calls for the public to respond to the students’ call and protect their right to protest on Saturday. “On October 24, we once again call on all activists to put on their red [trade union] vests so that young people and workers can exercise their right to demonstrate and to make their demands heard,” the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) wrote.

“We are witnessing an authoritarian shift that goes hand in hand with the government’s stubborn refusal to own up to its record and to call into question its unjust policy in favor of the wealthiest,” dozens of trade unionists, advocates, and cultural workers wrote in an appeal, calling for support for the protests.

“This choice is irresponsible and dangerous for democracy, and for the physical integrity of those who defend it without the framework of these mobilizations,” they stated. “It paves the way for the far right to come to power.”