Qamar Bashir
During my four years in France, I witnessed a society that refuses to surrender its voice after casting its vote. Demonstrations were part of public life. Teachers, students, workers and pensioners understood that rights must be defended and governments repeatedly reminded of their obligations. The French possess the organization, determination and endurance to turn public dissatisfaction into political pressure.
The question today is therefore not why the French are protesting. It is why longstanding school grievances have produced this rapidly spreading confrontation at this particular moment.
Teacher shortages, uncomfortable classrooms and deteriorating buildings did not suddenly appear this September. What has changed is the economic atmosphere surrounding them. Factually the school protests have become an outlet for a wider accumulation of anger: expensive fuel, pressure on purchasing power, threatened public services and mounting international commitments. The classroom has supplied the immediate cause around which deeper frustration can gather.
On October 1, more than 1,020 high schools were affected by protests or strikes, including 222 blockades, according to Education Ministry figures reported by Le Monde. The movement had expanded from 180 affected schools on September 28. That speed demands an explanation extending beyond the condition of school buildings alone.
Students’ demands are real. Their families’ economic anxieties are real. Together, they can create a confrontation far larger than either grievance would produce in isolation.
A parent paying more to drive to work hears that the government must economize. A student discovers that an absent teacher has not been replaced. Families watch defence commitments expand while being told that improvements in everyday life must wait. Each experience reinforces the same question: whose security and whose future are receiving priority?
France’s fuel crisis illustrates the pressure. Diesel reached approximately €2.41 per litre in September, while SP95-E10 petrol exceeded €2.17 per litre. Reporting described government concern about a return of the anger that drove the Yellow Vest movement. Fuel is politically explosive because millions cannot simply choose to stop travelling to work.
Europe’s exposure to the Middle East is direct and substantial. In 2025, Saudi Arabia and Iraq supplied approximately 6.8 percent and 5.8 percent of EU oil imports respectively—a combined 12.6 percent from those two countries alone. Qatar supplied 8.9 percent of EU LNG imports, while the European Commission puts its contribution to total EU gas imports at approximately 4 percent.
According to S&P Global, Middle Eastern diesel exports to Europe averaged 110,000 barrels a day during September through September 21, down from 191,000 in August—a fall of approximately 42 percent, taking deliveries toward their lowest monthly level since February 2020. Meanwhile, a key European wholesale diesel benchmark rose from $752.25 per tonne immediately before the war on February 27 to $1,536 on September 18, an increase of approximately 104 percent. Europe was receiving fewer Middle Eastern deliveries while paying more than twice the pre-war wholesale price.
Gas supplies have suffered alongside oil products. The International Energy Agency reports that LNG loadings from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates fell by 35 billion cubic metres between March and June compared with the same period in 2025.
The resulting burden reaches directly into European life. By late September, EU countries had spent more than €100 billion—approximately $113.5 billion—extra on energy imports since the Iran war began. That additional bill squeezes businesses and households while increasing demands for government assistance. Resources are consumed by securing and subsidizing energy instead of improving living standards. By late September, EU countries had incurred more than €100 billion—approximately $113.5 billion—in additional energy import expenditure since the Iran war began.
At the same time, NATO allies have committed to defence and related security spending reaching 5 percent of GDP by 2035, including at least 3.5 percent for core military requirements. Trump’s pressure helped secure that commitment. Its implementation creates substantial competing demands on national resources.
Supporting Ukraine, expanding defence capabilities and purchasing expensive energy impose substantial, overlapping demands on Europe’s resources. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the EU and its member states have mobilised €224.5 billion in support for Ukraine and its people, encompassing military, financial and humanitarian assistance, support for refugees and proceeds from immobilised Russian assets.
France’s public debt reached approximately €3.596 trillion, equivalent to 119 percent of GDP, at the end of June. Against that background, the government’s proposed €54 billion fiscal adjustment for 2027 intensifies the argument over who must sacrifice and what the state must protect.
This is why the timing of the school movement matters. Familiar failings become harder to tolerate when families have less financial breathing space. An overheated classroom or missing teacher can become evidence of something larger: a state asking for patience at home while accepting expanding obligations abroad.
The school issue provides a rallying point. Calling it a pretext should not diminish the students’ grievances; it describes how a specific demand can become the vehicle for broader discontent. The danger for the government is that education, fuel prices and austerity cease to be separate controversies and become one argument about political priorities.
French leaders remain responsible for their choices. They cannot blame every unrepaired building on Washington. But Washington must also answer for the consequences of its strategy. Economic pressure directed at Iran does not remain confined to Iran. It reaches European commuters, businesses and taxpayers. Allies are helping absorb the costs of a war they cannot afford to treat as someone else’s problem.
Across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, people who had no voice in this decision are being forced to absorb its consequences. The United States should be confronted with a formal international demand to compensate affected countries and communities for the demonstrable losses this war has inflicted.
Accountability cannot end at the battlefield while families elsewhere pay through higher prices, lost livelihoods and diminished futures. If this destruction continues, millions more could be pushed into poverty, turning military escalation into a prolonged human catastrophe. This war of choice must stop. One means of forcing that reckoning is to insist that those who chose it face its full costs. Washington cannot claim the power to wage war while leaving the rest of humanity to settle the bill.
France’s classrooms are sounding an alarm that the world cannot afford to ignore. When soaring living costs, shrinking opportunities and strained public services exhaust people’s patience, a local grievance can become a national confrontation. The pressures feeding anger in France could fuel unrest across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and beyond, destabilizing governments and driving more families into poverty.
Those who choose escalation must face the costs they impose on others. Stop the war, restore secure energy supplies and return public resources to public needs—before today’s hardship becomes tomorrow’s wider political upheaval. Neither France’s children nor families anywhere should be forced to surrender their education, dignity and future to a war they never chose.
The writer is Press Secretary to the President (Rtd),Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France,Former Press Attaché to Malaysia and Former MD, SRBC .He is living in Michigan, USA.
