Over 560 schools disrupted in France on Friday as protests escalate into ‘urban violence’ – Europe live

Something a little different – a new social media trend has seen tourists in Prague queue near the famed Charles Bridge to recreate a 1988 photo of the iconic British band Depeche Mode.

The black and white image shows Dave Gahan (facing the camera) and Martin Gore (looking towards the bridge) standing next to the Pietà sculpture.

AP has more on how the photo has captured the imaginations of international visitors to Czechia:

Fans have been making the pilgrimage for years, but photographs of a mass gathering on the bridge between the band’s Prague concerts in 2024 appear to have helped fuel a modern-day boom.

Currently, the photo recreated by the visiting fans is trending with millions of views on social media.

Jorge Sanchez, from California, and his wife were among the recent visitors.

“Well, I remember seeing the picture from way back, and then I kind of remember, and I looked it up, and I learned that it was here, so I wanted to make sure I took a picture,” Sanchez said.

“I think it fit at the time, you know, with their music, you know, and their message and their music with your personal Jesus and all of that, so it’s kind of fitting.”

My colleague Angelique Chrisafis in Paris has the full report here on the student protests in France.

She writes:

As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.

“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”

“School is a right, not a privilege,” read a cardboard sign as Sophia listed the grievances of teenagers across France: a lack of state investment in education, overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings, poor teacher pay, staff absences and an unequal system in which social background determined success. Other reasons for the protest included the opaque and difficult online system for university applications as well as the unbearable temperatures in classrooms during the heatwaves in May and June.

“The education budget is being cut to shreds while so much extra funding is being put into the army,” said Sophia, who wanted to go on to study art and work in animation. She said she hoped the demonstrations and blockades would continue into next week. Several teachers stood by the barricades in support.

Read more:

A police officer deployed to the school protests in Belfort, north-east France was brutally attacked after another off-duty cop arrested a young man, Belfort prosecutor Paul-Edouard Lallois told the AFP news agency.

The officer was “attacked by a mob of young people” near the Courbet secondary school in Belfort at 9.15am local time. The group “knocked him to the ground and beat him with their fists and feet, particularly around the head”, said Lallois, who announced he will open an investigation for attempted murder of a public official. He is scheduled to hold a press conference this afternoon.

Police backup “quickly intervened to disperse the group of attackers” and provide assistance to the officer, Lallois added. He suffered “a brief loss of consciousness” and sustained “several wounds” to his face.

A 17-year-old student at the school was arrested shortly afterward. He has not been formally identified as having struck the officer, Lallois said, adding that investigations are ongoing to establish his involvement.

Commenting on the attack, the French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said: “These images, which are exceptionally violent, are unbearable.

“The police officer, who was deliberately targeted, was taken to hospital after losing consciousness. Fortunately, his condition is no longer a cause for serious concern at this time. My thoughts are with him.”

We are getting more pictures of violent clashes in France as the high school protests continue across the country.

After a plainclothes officer was violently attacked in Belfort, the interior minister Laurent Nuñez condemned “unbearable” video footage of the incident and said the investigation will focus on “attempted murder.”

“Everything will be done to identify the perpetrators of this despicable act. Total support for the police officers and gendarmes who are intervening in difficult conditions,” he said.

French president Emmanuel Macron is ⁠scheduled to chair a videoconference with G7 leaders in the next half hour focused on the global energy situation, the Élysée Palace said.

Macron has already spoken with US president Donald Trump and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney overnight to discuss the latest surge in fuel prices.

Separately, EU ambassadors ⁠will also convene on Friday afternoon to ​discuss the global ⁠energy situation, the Irish Presidency of ⁠the EU ​said.

“The ‌diesel ‌market is currently ‌very tight, leading to high prices for consumers across the ‌world. The Presidency is committed ​to maintaining close collaboration and coordination with ⁠all member states ​and the ​Commission,” ​a spokesperson ​for the ‌Presidency ​said.

Earlier, EU representatives discussed a French proposal to release diesel stocks in response to US pressure to help cool surging fuel prices linked to the Iran war, three sources familiar with details of the discussion told ⁠Reuters.

The proposal, discussed on a call involving EU governments, calls for European countries to release 50 million barrels of diesel and International Energy Agency members to release 50 million barrels of crude oil, the sources said.

Europe correspondent
in Paris

In other news in France, the country’s justice minister has accused Jordan Bardella of “shameless lies” after Marine Le Pen’s de facto deputy dismissed new evidence from an investigative website that he posted antisemitic messages on social media as “crude fabrications, obscure and easily manipulated screenshots … vile statements I obviously never made”.

The Mediapart website on Monday published the messages, dating back to 2013, in which Bardella – then a 17-year-old activist in Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) – allegedly wrote comments including “the Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so” and “all the banks are owned by Jews”.

Mediapart said on Thursday it had authenticated the messages, mainly on Messenger, Facebook’s instant messaging service, and published screenshots. It said they were provided by two sources close to Bardella, had been authenticated with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and the data extraction had been certified by a bailiff.

“Extracting the conversation allows us to date it, to confirm that this conversation has not been subsequently modified, and to confirm that the person involved in the conversation is listed by Meta/Facebook under the name Jordan Bardella.”

It added that an analysis of the content also “possible to verify that it is indeed the real Jordan Bardella”: biographical details in the conversation included mention of a mother born in Italy, a 2013 interview Bardella gave to Le Parisien newspaper, and his failure to pass the entrance examination for the prestigious Sciences Po university.

Bardella, who created a new Facebook profile dedicated to his burgeoning political career late in 2013, said on Tuesday he had filed a formal legal complaint for defamation.

On Thursday he repeated his denial and added he would now also file complaints for “forgery and use of forgeries”.

The evidence was “therefore not evidence at all, and will not hold up for a second in court”, he said on social media.

“The so-called ‘investigation’ is already collapsing. The French people will be the judge of this blatant fabrication.”

The allegations against Bardella come just seven months before next year’s presidential elections, with Le Pen leading in the opinion polls.

Bardella is widely expected to become prime minister if she wins and the affair threatens to damage her decades-long “detoxification” of the RN, long associated with the antisemitic views of some of its members including its founder, Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie.

The French justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, told French radio on Friday there was “little doubt” Bardella had made the comments.

“Do we want a prime minister who is not only antisemitic, but also lies to the French people in the face of overwhelming evidence? … His strategy raises serious doubts about his ability to hold political office,” he said.

The French Socialist party’s leader, Olivier Faure, said Bardella was “lying. So we have a two-pronged issue here: his antisemitism and lying in politics. Neither is forgivable.”

Faure added: “He could have had another defence – he could have said: ‘I was young, I’ve changed since then.’ That’s not what he’s saying.”

Back to France, midday figures quoted by Le Figaro show that 564 schools and educational establishments have been disrupted by the ongoing unrest, and some 600 people have been arrested so far today as the high school protests continue.

Europe environment correspondent

Heavy rains have begun to batter eastern Spain, as large parts of the country brace for torrential downpours throughout the weekend.

Valencian authorities shut schools, affecting almost half a million students, while in Catalonia, towns in 3 regions have been put under lockdown, El País reports.

Red warnings of “extraordinary danger” were issued in parts of Tarragona and along the Castellón coast.

The rains come almost two years after devastating floods made worse by climate change swept through eastern Spain and killed more than 240 people, mostly in the Valencia region.

Spanish climate scientists have already attributed this autumn’s heavy rain to a superheated Mediterranean Sea, which follows a scorchingly hot summer in western Europe. Aemet, the country’s meteorological organisation, said many areas of the western Mediterranean are 4C hotter than usual for this time of year, with temperatures more typical of August.

Hot seas evaporate more water and hot air can hold more moisture, allowing downpours to hit harder.

Another big story we are keeping a close eye on is the worsening weather in southern Spain, where local authorities are bracing for torrential rain over the coming days.

Over to our European environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan for an update.

in Madrid

Meanwhile, rightwing parties in Spain have said they will vote against new housing measures that are set to be put to parliament today by the Socialist-led coalition government.

The decision by the conservative People’s party, the far-right Vox and the hardline Catalan pro-independence party Junts means the new measures will likely not pass – a result that could see the country pitched into a heated standoff over access to housing.

The long-simmering anger over soaring housing costs burst into public view 10 days ago after 87-year-old Maricarmen, who uses a wheelchair, was evicted from the home she had lived in for 70 years. For many in Spain, it was the last straw of a housing market that had left many behind as rents surged 80% within a decade and the cost of homes climbed by 63%.

As the anger snowballed into encampments across the country, the Socialists-led coalition government said it had agreed on new measures and would put them to parliament on Friday.

Late Thursday, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the vote would go ahead as planned despite the decision by rightwing parties. “Or you’re with the social majority or with speculators,” he said, adding that the vote would lay bare the “true colours” of the dissenting parties.

Meanwhile the Madrid tenants’ union, which has been the driving force behind the protests, responded to the news with a call for people in Spain to again take to the streets this weekend.

The protests have breathed new life into Sánchez’s beleaguered government by shifting the country’s attention from the recent events in Ceuta to focus on housing.

On Friday, as a new poll suggested that two-thirds of people in Spain support the idea of intervening in the housing market to limit prices, sources told news site Eldiario.es that the Socialists were mulling whether to bring forward next year’s elections and hold them in November.

We are getting more pictures from Strasbourg…

Back to France, the situation appears to be escalating again in Strasbourg, where protesters are building a barrier and clashing with the local police.

Further incidents are also reported in Paris and Nantes, where at least ten people were arrested during a clash with riot police this morning.

There are also big news lines emerging from Sweden, as the parliament speaker Andreas Norlén has asked Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson to have another go at forming the new Swedish government.

She will be given a week, starting on Monday, to see if she can build a government that would secure enough support in the new parliament. At the end of that period she will need to report back or ask for an extension.

The move comes just days after Andersson said on Monday she was unable to secure enough backing after a potential coalition partner backed Norlén, a centre-right politician, for the post of the speaker (Europe Live, Monday).

It’s worth remembering that Sweden runs on the principle of “negative parliamentarism,” meaning that any PM needs to see an absence of an absolute majority against them – instead of an absolute majority in favour – which creates a bit of breathing space as parties can still abstain (Europe Live, Swedish election night).

Let’s see what she can do in the next few days.

The prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France told BFMTV that the situation on the ground was “incomparable” to the riots on Thursday, with “far fewer demonstrators” joining the protests today.

11 schools in the region are affected, while 55 switched to e-learning, Jacques Witkowski told the broadcaster.

Some 100 schools have been severely damaged during French high school protests that escalated this week into “urban violence,” with 40 headteachers injured, according to the latest figures from the French education ministry.

The pupils’ grievances range from overloaded timetables and overcrowded classes to insufficient teachers and unbearable temperatures during heatwaves earlier this year. Riot police have been deployed to confront the increasingly violent protests.

Nearly 3,000 lycée students – aged between 15 and 18 – have been detained since the start of the protests, including 1,949 on Thursday alone, the interior ministry said.

During a call with local prosecutors last night, the justice minister Gérald Darmanin urged them to pursue civil liability claims so that parents are made financially responsible for damage caused by their children.

Meanwhile, education minister Édouard Geffray asked parents for help, warning that “children are in danger on the streets.”

But there are no signs of tensions going down, with first incidents reported near the Jean-Rostand high school in Strasbourg and the Simone-Veil high school in Marseille. Some 400 schools remain closed today.

Damages from this week’s protests are likely to go into hundreds of millions euros, with the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region reporting 25 million in damages.

I will keep an eye on that for you, and bring you all the latest from Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, too.

It’s Friday, 2 October 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.