By Joseph Ataman, CNN
Paris (CNN) — After a heavy-handed response to the student protests sweeping France, the government has changed tack.
It has banned police from using stun grenades after a student’s hand was blown off earlier in the week and there are promises to listen more to protesters’ demands.
But with hundreds of schools still facing blockade and calls for more protests, will it be enough?
What has the government said?
“Empathy” and a little more “pedagogy” is what French President Emmanuel Macron demanded of police forces facing student protesters, said Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, following a massive day of protests on Tuesday.
“The president recalled the necessity to maintain order, intervene each time there’s serious violence, all while asking us to act with the greatest proportionality,” Nunez told radio station RTL Wednesday, after an emergency ministerial meeting.
Nunez, a former chief of Paris’ police, said that he had ordered forces to refrain from using the type of stun grenade linked to a teenager losing his hand in protests on Monday.
“We don’t deal with a movement of highschoolers like we deal with a movement of adults,” Nunez said.
France’s Prime Minister Sebastian Lecornu told lawmakers Tuesday that high schools would replace lessons until the end of the week with a “period of internal democracy” to air grievances and discuss solutions.
While refuting any suggestion of police repression, Lecornu condemned violence on the margins of protests, which were mostly peaceful Tuesday, despite the dramatic scenes that dominated coverage. Lecornu is due to address the French nation on Wednesday evening.
The proposal for discussion is a tried and tested tactic of Macron, who has historically favored attempts to integrate public debate into policy making. His government tried to calm the Yellow Vests protests with a similar listening campaign in 2019.
Meanwhile, 18 investigations into officers’ conduct during the protests have been opened by police internal investigators, Nunez said, adding they would examine the proportionality of police actions. Police forces “are there to protect the high schoolers,” he said.
Are protests getting worse?
On Wednesday, more than 500 educational institutions were due to be partially or fully closed because of blockades – a 41% decrease from Tuesday, according to the education ministry. That will leave 86% of schools open, the ministry added. According to the interior ministry, 488 people were detained around the high school protests Tuesday.
The student blockade actions on Wednesday were a fraction of the hundreds of thousands who marched with workers’ unions Tuesday in support of students across France. But it’s a sign of the rancor among students that protests are continuing day-to-day.
Student unions have called for a day of protests on October 17 and five major teaching unions said they would strike Thursday in solidarity with their students, with little sign that school blockades will halt in the meantime.
What do students want?
More teachers, smaller class sizes and buildings better adapted to the climate are the most common demands of high school protesters.
Student union leaders, who represent some of the young people protesting, have also called for a 10-billion-euro ($11.2-billion) investment in high school and university-level education.
A 10-point list of proposals drawn up by student unions included rethinking student workloads, ending a controversial university admissions system, ending police violence against students and creating more student accommodation.
Sabrine Kharbach, spokesperson of the Student Union federation of unionized students, told BFMTV that blockades would continue until their demands were met.
Anaïs Ella, spokesperson for Les Lycéens, a student association, told CNN that Lecornu didn’t address the demands laid out by student unions.
She said that some of the prime minister’s proposals – including filling teaching posts in exam-year classes – “was the basics of the education system.” She said that money would solve some of their demands but that a deeper reset in relations between the government and students was needed.
“We are the ones most directly affected by the national education system, yet we aren’t actually listened to,” she added.
Since the weekend, there have been concerted efforts among students to reject the violence that has marred protests.
Student Angelo Via, 19, who protested in the street Tuesday, told CNN there was a feeling of “powerlessness” in the face of violent police actions, despite many students protesting peacefully. He hopes the protests will bring about “radical change,” especially regarding education budgets.
What’s next?
There will be relief in France at the interior minister’s decision to ban one type of police grenade, as the injuries suffered by some teenage protesters has sparked widespread horror. But the proposal for time for debate has been met with skepticism in some quarters.
The main union for school directors, SNPDEN-UNSA, said that the single day set aside for discussions was insufficient to respond to problems in depth.
Nicolas Bonnet, national secretary of the union, told BFMTV that, “something other than a mere consultation period was required to get out of this crisis.”
There are whispers in France of these protests transforming into another Yellow Vests movement, which was leaderless, nationwide and unified a broad church of grievances.
Mimicking the months-long violent protests – the longest in French history – that rocked Macron’s first term, students and journalists have already begun referring to the next day of protest set for Thursday as “Act IV.”
Additional reporting by Lucie Lepellec.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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