What the school protests reveal – and why the risk to Europe lies in its own choices
France is in the grip of an unprecedented wave of school protests, and commentators abroad (CNN among them) warn that its debt crisis could spill over into the rest of Europe.
The reality is at once less spectacular and more troubling than that narrative suggests.
What is happening
Since 21 September 2026, lycées have been blockaded across France. The movement grew out of concrete demands – teacher shortages, dilapidated buildings – but it remains a minority one: at the height of the mobilisation, on 6 October, the authorities counted 256,000 demonstrators, out of more than 2.2 million lycée pupils. It was swiftly captured by the political party La France insoumise and by the trade unions.
The movement has been disfigured by the violence of small groups: schools set on fire, a woman burned in the face, a song glorifying terrorists. The State first let things happen, then cracked down en masse, with more than 5,000 people taken into custody, 87 per cent of them minors. The philosopher Pierre Manent recognises in this an old method: governing by fear.
Why the markets are worried
It is not the street that worries the markets; it is the debt. It stands at 119 per cent of national output and has risen under every president since 1981. Investors are demanding ever higher interest rates from France, and some are selling their French bonds. For the State, this means €12 billion in additional interest as early as next year.
For households, it means dearer mortgages and more exposed lifeinsurance savings. The 2027 budget asks pensioners and families to bear the main burden, and could be adopted without a vote in Parliament.
How the crisis could spread to Europe
France accounts for nearly a sixth of the Union’s economy. If it falters, interest rates rise for its neighbours too, starting with Italy, and no European mechanism is powerful enough to rescue it. It is also the second-largest net contributor to the EU budget, now being negotiated for 2028–2034: the Union will need France at the very moment France has the least means.
Nor is French anger isolated: in Germany, the AfD won 43.8 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt in September. Ukraine’s accession, moreover, threatens an already weakened French agriculture. The coming weeks will be decisive: the agency Moody’s rules on France’s credit rating on 23 October, the National Assembly votes on the budget on 17 November, and several capitals want to wrap up the EU budget before the French presidential election.
A crisis of sovereignty
At bottom, the French crisis is a crisis of consent. Since the Revolution, sovereignty has belonged to the ‘Nation’, exercised by elected representatives free of any mandate, and not to the people themselves. Under the Fifth Republic, Parliament can undo what the people have decided: in 2005 the French rejected the European Constitution, and in 2008 Parliament ratified the Treaty of Lisbon, which took over its substance.
Freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, proclaimed in the texts, are poorly respected in practice.
The major choices have never been put to the French: whether or not to leave the Union and the euro, the case for and against which the article sets out; family policy; or immigration presented as the answer to ageing.
What can be expected of 2027
Europe is therefore not merely threatened by the French crisis; it is in part its cause, because it decides without the consent of its peoples. It would be naïve to expect the presidential election of April 2027 to settle the matter, since no candidate places consent and sovereignty at the heart of their programme.
That is no doubt why the street is becoming, more and more, the last place where the French can make themselves heard, despite the blows.
