France freezes public-sector pay and high schools grind to a halt
The blockades reached a second national day on October 1, 2026, when the Union Étudiante claimed 30 universities blockaded in its midday tally and the government convened an interministerial crisis cell. The day before, 356 schools were affected and 625 people were detained. The 2027 budget, the last of Emmanuel Macron’s term, freezes the index point (the reference unit used by the French state to calculate civil servants’ base pay) and leaves the new military spending increase outside the deficit target.
A high-school occupation at the start of the school year is routine in France. What changed in 2026 was the clock. On Tuesday, September 29, 2026, the Education Ministry counted 338 high schools still affected in the end-of-day tally, 45 of them blockaded and 46 facing blockade attempts, and Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced 440 people detained, most of them minors, with two thirds taken into police custody, 48 officers injured and seven incidents in which hydrochloric acid was thrown at law enforcement. The eight civil-service federations called more than 170 demonstrations across the country for the same day, two days before the 2027 budget went to the Council of Ministers.
Injury counts do not reconcile across sources because each count measures one side. The Interior Ministry, which counts the security forces, reported 48 officers injured on Tuesday; the Education Ministry counted at least 10 education staff injured — a teacher assaulted in the Nord, a head teacher hit by a firework mortar in Hauts-de-Seine — and 31 wounded among pupils and staff in the end-of-day tally. The Île-de-France region, led by Valérie Pécresse, recorded 75 schools affected, 20 of them hit by clashes or vandalism, and 20 injured. On Wednesday, September 30, the education minister added 76 wounded among pupils and staff across the mobilisation days, a figure that matches none of the others because it does not measure the same universe.
The movement began around Paris and spread across the country. On Tuesday, September 29, there were clashes with police in Lille, Rennes, Nantes, Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon, with burning bins, wrecked bus shelters and tear gas fired at pupils throwing bottles and stones. The demands are material: overcrowded classes, missing teachers, buildings unfit for use and schedules that consume the whole day. Teachers and firefighters walked out the same day.
In the civil service, the strike was uneven and the two sides’ numbers do not meet. The Education Ministry recorded 11.47% of its staff on strike and 13.71% among teachers; the primary-school union estimated 40% in that segment and the secondary-school union 38%. On the streets, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) counted more than 300,000 demonstrators nationwide, 70,000 of them in Paris, while the Interior Ministry counted 206,000 nationwide and 30,000 in the capital. The statement that called the day, signed by the eight federations on September 3, 2026, demands a general pay rise, indexation of the index point to inflation and budgets equal to the public services’ duties.
On Monday, September 28, 2026, the interior minister counted 164 people detained and, among the day’s wounded, 12 members of the security forces, eight teachers (three of them head teachers) and a dozen pupils. The same day, the interior and education ministers announced that the security forces would intervene in cases of violence and full blockade, with “proportional use of force”, and began describing the blockades as “urban violence”, the term the French government uses for episodes of violence in working-class neighbourhoods. Education Minister Édouard Geffray accused left-wing lawmakers of La France Insoumise of “political instrumentalisation of the youth” and Jean-Luc Mélenchon replied that the prime minister had “ordered the crackdown”; Sébastien Lecornu spoke of an irresponsible escalation.
The index point
The index point is the unit on which every French civil servant’s pay is calculated. Freezing it for a year, as the government proposes for 2027, means no general pay rise will be granted. Lecornu announced the measure in an interview with Le Figaro published on September 17, 2026, estimating a gain of €2 billion from the freeze and promising talks with unions so that the lowest salaries are not exposed to inflation. The whole adjustment is an effort of €54 billion, and the bill’s deficit target is 4.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) excluding the new increase in military spending; with it, the target reaches 5%.
The deficit target the government presents is 4.8% of gross domestic product excluding the new increase in military spending — and 5% with it.
Act two
On Wednesday, September 30, 2026, the movement grew and the state’s response hardened. The interior minister counted 356 schools affected, against 338 the day before, 625 people detained and 83 police officers and gendarmes injured. The education minister added 119 pupils and staff injured since the blockades began, 34 of them education staff, a figure he called unprecedented in the French school system. The ministry’s counts form the week’s staircase: 164 detained on Monday, 440 on Tuesday and 625 on Wednesday. The police officers and gendarmes injured climbed in step, from 12 to 48 and then to 83.
The French police watchdog entered the case. The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) opened three investigations into injured protesters — in Sevran, in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône and in Tours, where a young man was hospitalised with head injuries a prosecutor considered compatible with a shot from a lanceur de balles de défense (LBD), the less-lethal launcher used by French police. Nuñez defended the conduct of the security forces, saying they had intervened “with a great deal of proportionality”.
On Thursday, October 1, 2026, the “act two” called by the Union syndicale lycéenne (USL) and the Union Étudiante brought university students into the same movement. The Union Étudiante claimed 30 universities blockaded in its midday tally, among them Lyon 2 and Lyon 3, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Aix-Marseille, Nanterre, Paris 1, Lille 2, Sciences Po Rennes, Rennes 1, Sorbonne Université, Rouen, Brittany and Poitiers. The figure is the union’s, and it moved through the day: the union’s own first count, on Tuesday, spoke of about ten universities, French public radio recorded 26 faculties blockaded during the morning and TF1 Info reported 15 that same morning.
The university demands are the ones the 2027 budget makes heavier: cuts to higher-education places, selection through the Parcoursup and MonMaster platforms, registration fees for foreign students multiplied by 16 and the end of housing benefit (APL), on top of the €1 university meal tied to passage of the budget, according to the statement in which the two unions called the day.
The day also brought fires and clashes. A fire in the hall of Nelson-Mandela high school in Nantes forced the evacuation of pupils and staff; there was fire damage to a school façade in Bischheim, in Alsace, and a high school was evacuated in Bordeaux. In Haubourdin, in the Nord, the high school and two nearby primary schools stayed closed until Monday after municipal buildings were wrecked and bins set alight. In Marseille, city buses were attacked and a driver was assaulted; a police officer was seriously injured in the face in Saint-Avold, in the Moselle. In Île-de-France, more than 200 high schools were disrupted, about 50 of them the scene of violence and vandalism, and police in Calvados announced they would use drones to watch school entrances.
The government answered with force and with a platform for grievances. Lecornu convened an interministerial crisis cell and told ministers not to travel in the following days so that prefects could follow the situation locally. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin held a videoconference with the country’s 36 general prosecutors on the “firmness of the criminal response”. The education ministry announced a consultation platform open to all high schools, with a national review of the proposals. By late afternoon, the prime minister’s office counted 900 actions outside high schools, with every department now affected, and blamed what it called “urban violence” on an “operation organised by LFI and its far-left proxies”, citing intelligence services.
On a state visit to Madrid, Emmanuel Macron said no fear justifies violence and that political leaders should not legitimise it: “We have seen many officials going in front of the lycées to excite the pupils. I think that is serious.” Senator Bruno Retailleau, the right’s candidate in the 2027 presidential election, proposed putting the banning of La France Insoumise (LFI) into public debate, “a party fascinated by violence” that, he said, “is trying to organise the insurrection”. Mélenchon replied that the proposal is “ridiculous” and said he watches the police crackdown on the movement with concern.
The Union Étudiante has called an “act three” from Friday, October 2, and the two unions are keeping the national youth demonstration for October 6, with general assemblies and university blockades, under the demand for “massive funding” for high schools and universities. The eight civil-service federations have not yet set their next national day.
The 2027 budget reached the Council of Ministers on the same day the protest stopped fitting inside the high schools: university campuses entered the count, the €54 billion effort with the index point frozen for a year remains on paper, and the next national demonstration is already set for October 6, 2026.