France’s Senate passed a bill on October 28 requiring protesters to pay for damage caused during unrest, and the bill is now at the heart of the debate heading for November 5. The education dispute that started the protests, over conditions, funding and the Parcoursup admissions platform, has not been resolved. But the damage bill has given the movement a second grievance, one that touches the right to protest itself, and it has widened the coalition of people with a reason to march beyond students and teachers.
The bill’s supporters present it as accountability. Those who break things during unrest, they argue, should pay for the repair, and the cost of damage should not fall on taxpayers or on businesses whose property was destroyed. The bill’s critics present it as deterrence. A financial risk attached to demonstrating, they argue, will discourage peaceful protesters as well as violent ones, because the line between the two is often drawn after the fact, by officials who were not present, and because the prospect of a bill will deter people who cannot afford to risk one.
The legal and practical questions
The bill raises legal questions that have not yet been tested. How is damage attributed to individual protesters, when a crowd is large and the damage is caused by a few. How is the amount calculated, and by whom. What happens to a protester who cannot pay. Those questions matter because they determine whether the bill functions as accountability for wrongdoing or as a general deterrent to protesting. A bill that cannot attribute damage fairly will be seen as punitive regardless of its intent, and a bill that is seen as punitive will enlarge the movement it was meant to discourage.
The practical questions are equally important. Protests in France have a long history, and the state’s response to them has varied from negotiation to repression. The damage bill represents a shift toward financial deterrence, a tool that is less visible than police action but potentially more chilling, because it follows protesters home, in the form of a bill, long after the demonstration has ended. That chilling effect is precisely what critics fear, and it is why the bill has become a rallying point for groups that had no stake in the original education dispute.
November 5 and the bill’s future
November 5 will show whether the bill has enlarged or shrunk the movement, whether the protests stay peaceful, and whether the government offers anything new before the day. The teachers verdict on the education package was blunt, and the damage bill has not softened it. If the November crowds are large and peaceful, the bill’s critics will argue that it has failed as deterrence and should be withdrawn. If disorder occurs, its supporters will argue that it is needed more than ever.
Either way, the bill has changed the debate. A dispute that began in schools is now a dispute about the right to protest, and that dispute will not be settled by an education package, however generous. It will be settled by a decision about what kind of protest France wants to allow, and what price it is prepared to charge for it.
