Curfews for minors, school blockades announced for Tuesday: young people want an answer, not just a prefectoral order

This Saturday, 31 October, the third day of social mobilisation in three weeks, part of France's young people are spending the night under an exceptional regime. In several departments, prefects have introduced curfews for unaccompanied minors. And while the streets hold their breath, high-school student organisations are already announcing what comes next: new blockades from Tuesday.

The facts

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, reports the website Made in Marseille, the police prefecture issued five orders covering Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Aubagne and several other towns. Under-18s on their own may not be on the public highway there between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., within defined perimeters, for three nights, from Friday to Monday morning. Undeclared demonstrations are banned around the Vieux-Port, the Canebière and nine shopping centres.

In Loire-Atlantique, according to Saint-Nazaire Infos, prefect Laurent Hottiaux has banned all gatherings in the centres of Nantes and Saint-Nazaire and around several retail areas, from 10 a.m. on Saturday to 6 a.m. on Sunday. A curfew targets unaccompanied minors in certain districts of the two cities, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. The prefect considers the day and evening "high risk", fearing that troublemakers might join the marches using Halloween as cover.

These measures are not the first. As early as 23 October, according to Hérault Tribune, the Ligue des droits de l'Homme and the Syndicat des avocats de France were challenging a similar curfew imposed on minors in the Hérault before the administrative court in Montpellier.

On the student side, the movement shows no sign of weakening. Marius Mesnil, co-general secretary of the Union syndicale lycéenne, called on BFMTV for new blockades from Tuesday, accusing the government of organising chaos. Youth organisations are also preparing for the cross-sector strike on Thursday, 5 November, LCP notes.

The positions at stake

The government points to a twofold response. On public order, AFP reported in mid-October an Interior Ministry tally of nearly 900 police officers and gendarmes injured since the start of the movement, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu then described a mobilisation that had, in his view, become a movement of urban violence. The partial ransacking of a high school in Lormont, near Bordeaux, with damage estimated at no less than 250,000 euros according to AFP, left a strong impression.

On substance, the executive presented a series of measures on 26 October, detailed by Public Sénat: cancellation of 836 job cuts in secondary education, 500 posts for nurses, psychologists and social workers, seconde classes capped at 28 pupils within two years, 15,000 additional places in higher education and the replacement of Parcoursup in 2028. Education Minister Édouard Geffray defends a response he considers, according to Public Sénat, "more democratic than mortars".

High-school and university student organisations, for their part, are calling for ten measures costed at 10 billion euros, including an emergency plan for school buildings. According to LCP, they took badly the fact that influencers were received at Matignon before them. The vice-president of Les Lycéens !, Louis Letoublon, said the 15,000 places bordered on mockery.

In the Senate, criticism cuts across party lines. LR senator Max Brisson speaks of "good patchwork", understandable given the lack of room for manoeuvre, while Socialist Colombe Brossel welcomes the cancellation of the job cuts but denounces "half-measures".

A demonstration cannot be banned on the grounds that, in the past... — Sophie Mazas, lawyer for the LDH

The analysis

No one disputes that the State must protect shops, public property and people. The violence committed on the fringes of the marches is real and must be prosecuted. But a curfew targeting an entire age group is no trivial measure. It treats every teenager as a potential suspect, when the vast majority of mobilised high-school students are demonstrating peacefully for things as concrete as decent school buildings or a less opaque guidance system.

The Gaullist tradition has always held together the authority of the State and dialogue with the Nation. Authority without listening becomes crisis management; listening without resources becomes communication. And it is indeed the question of resources that is the sticking point: as centrist senator Laurent Lafon points out, the government's only real room for manoeuvre lies in the budget, and replacing Parcoursup requires a law for which no majority is assured.

Le Monde describes an executive searching for levers in the face of layered, accumulating anger. Yet the lever exists: it is called investment in state schools. The measures of 26 October go in the right direction, but they fall short of the urgency described by the pupils themselves, particularly regarding the state of buildings.

What now?

The Republic cannot answer its young people solely with prefectoral orders. A simple proposal: write into the 2027 budget, currently being debated in the National Assembly, a multi-year programming law for the renovation of school buildings, negotiated with local authorities and high-school student organisations. It would be a verifiable commitment, going beyond announcements. The question remains open: will the government manage to turn this crisis into a contract with a generation, rather than a trial of strength?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.