France Deploys 70,000 Police, Arrests Top 1,300, as Youth Protests Spread Across Europe

The unrest began in France in mid-September with student demonstrations over school conditions. It has since spread across the continent, with each country's protests built around local grievances.

The French response has been heavy. Authorities put 70,000 police officers on the streets nationwide for one Saturday of demonstrations. Clashes broke out in Paris, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse and Nantes, and police used tear gas, sound grenades and water cannons. The Interior Ministry reported more than 1,300 arrests.

Most union-organized marches were peaceful. The violence came later in the day. Thousands of shops in France have been damaged or looted in recent weeks.

President Emmanuel Macron has vowed that anyone who loots or destroys property will be held accountable and made to pay for the damage. A French intelligence assessment reportedly named Antifa and other far-left groups as instigators of some of the violence, according to a French outlet. The government has not confirmed that account in the material we reviewed.

Italy sends soldiers

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took some of the most visible steps. After a weekend of looting and clashes, she sent 500 additional soldiers to Milan and approved tougher penalties for minors involved in vandalism.

Meloni called the offenders "gangs of thugs" who used demonstrations to "sow chaos." She said destroying and stealing is a crime and that the state's response would be firm.

Serbia: the protests won

In Serbia, the movement ended differently. Student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism ran for nearly two years and ended with Vucic's defeat at the ballot box.

"Waking up, the first thing we felt was certainly a sense of relief and freedom," said student protester Stasa Piletic. "I feel that we finally moved from protests to responsibility."

Trump and Macron trade shots

President Donald Trump has used the unrest to press his immigration message. He blamed France's protests on immigration and urged the country to close its borders.

Macron rejected that framing. He called foreign leaders' comments "unacceptable and even stupid" and accused them of exploiting France's crisis for political gain. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took the other side, saying "Macron has failed."

The protesters themselves are not talking about borders. Their stated complaints are shabby school buildings, too few teachers, the cost of living, housing, corruption and a sense of not being listened to.

Maya Gourdel, a 19-year-old student in Brussels, has been writing slogans reading "If we burn, you burn with us!" Chiara, a 21-year-old in Milan, described schools without enough teachers and "the prospect of living in a tiny, overpriced house."

The generational math

The numbers behind the anger are specific. An EU survey published in 2025 found rising prices were a concern for 40% of people aged 16 to 30.

Among the 92.7 million EU residents at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2025, the highest risk was among 18-to-24-year-olds, at 26.3%. For people 65 and older it was 18.8%.

In France, people over 60 make up a quarter of the population but own 60% of the country's wealth, according to the OFCE think tank. French pensions are the largest public expense and are on track to reach 14% of economic output as the population ages and voters resist raising the retirement age.

Historian Niall Ferguson, writing in The Free Press, argued that the French, British and Italian fiscal crisis is "at root due to generational imbalances in welfare and tax systems," worsened by reflexive Keynesian spending after every shock. He cited OECD figures. Since 1960 the old-age dependency ratio across the 38 member economies has doubled from about 15 to about 30 people 65 and over per 100 people aged 15 to 64. Fertility over the same period has fallen from 3.3 to 1.5.

A Daily Wire opinion piece built on Ferguson's work and went further. It blamed endless welfarism and open borders for what it called the "voluntary self-abnegation" of Western civilizations. That is the writer's argument. The protesters quoted above do not make it, and Macron rejects the immigration link.

What is still open

The fiscal squeeze is real, but no government has shown how it plans to pay for aging populations while also fixing the schools and housing that young protesters are demanding. With French pension costs heading toward 14% of GDP and voters resisting a higher retirement age, the question of who covers the bill is unanswered. Police and troops can clear the streets, but they do nothing about that.