Paris police chief Patrice Faure has warned that France’s rapidly expanding high school protest movement is now “out of control,” calling on students to abandon violence and return to peaceful demonstrations as authorities prepare for another nationwide mobilisation.
The warning follows days of clashes between riot police and high school students across France, with protests that began over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating school buildings increasingly accompanied by vandalism and attacks on police.
Around 5,000 people, most of them teenagers, have been arrested since Monday, while more than 600 police officers have been injured, according to French authorities.
Teachers and members of the public have also been attacked, and damage to property is estimated at tens of millions of euros.
In a message posted on X, Faure said those who initially launched the protest movement were no longer able to control it.
“It is time to return to peaceful forms of action,” he said, urging students to end school blockades and rioting.
Faure also called on parents to keep their children away from what he described as the influence of “professional rioters” and their supporters.
Student unions have called for another national day of action on Tuesday, raising fears of renewed violence, particularly in central Paris.
The unrest has also developed into a political confrontation over allegations that far-left groups are attempting to exploit the student movement.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has accused the hard-left France Unbowed party, or LFI, and what he described as its ultra-left “proxies” of seeking to manipulate the protests.
A Paris police intelligence memorandum cited by the government identified the presence of university students, trade union activists and left-wing political figures during some of the earliest school blockades in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris.
The document, dated September 28 and reviewed by Le Monde, recorded 27 actions outside high schools in 12 municipalities between September 21 and 25. Union members, university students or left-wing elected officials were observed at six of them.
However, the intelligence assessment was geographically limited and does not establish that political groups directed the nationwide movement.
Le Monde noted that the report was based on observations around roughly 20 schools in Seine-Saint-Denis, while more than 1,000 educational institutions were involved in protests nationally by October 1.
The newspaper said the evidence could indicate that political and trade union organisations were attempting to capitalise on a fragmented, largely spontaneous student movement rather than exercising central control over it.
Students involved in the protests have meanwhile continued to cite overcrowded classrooms, chronic teacher shortages, deteriorating buildings and years of insufficient investment as their main grievances.
The demonstrations have now become one of the most serious challenges facing President Emmanuel Macron’s government, with authorities increasingly attempting to distinguish between students protesting peacefully over education conditions and groups involved in violence and destruction.
