French Unrest: Are we witnessing a new 'Yellow Vests' movement?

Home Shows Spotlight To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: Jean Remi Girard is a teacher in Asnieres in the north of Paris, and the President of the National Union des Lycees and Colleges, covering education workers from primary schools to college, 7 until 18 © Sarah Meyssonnier, REUTERS 17:38 Issued on: 02/10/2026 - 20:54Modified: 02/10/2026 - 20:56 From the show It's been 18 days since we first reported on isolated cases of schools protests at a high school in Rennes in Brittany, in Caen in Normandy and Villeneueve d'Asque on the suburbs of Lille. The complaints were similar in theme, overloaded timetables, staffing problems, poor facilities. It spread to Saint Denis and Creteil on the outskirts of Paris days later, one interview with the students was sen 1.4 million times on TikTok. It gathered pace, and morphed into what we've seen throughout the week, hundreds of protests, some peaceful, some with deeply distressing scenes, beyond the make shift barricades...