French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Monday endured a sometimes rocky reception at a boarding school taking on children during the Easter break, part of government efforts to stem juvenile delinquency and keep teens off the streets during holidays.
Attal’s trip to the Lycée du Parc impérial in Nice, on the French Riviera, came days after he announced a crackdown on youth violence in and around schools following a series of incidents that have shocked the nation.
An experimental programme catering to youths aged 13 to 16, the two-week boarding school in Nice is part of wider government efforts aimed at keeping teens off the streets during France's long school holidays.
“There’s a violence problem among young people. Tackling the issue is one of my government's biggest priorities,” Attal told a group of teenagers in uniform tracksuits as he visited the school.
When he asked the group whether they were happy to be there for the Easter holidays, which started on April 20 in the Nice region, most replied in the negative.
“My parents didn't convince me to go, they forced me,” said one male student aged 14. Another boy seemed not to know who Attal was, asking the 35-year-old premier: “Are you the mayor or the prime minister?”
“Me, I am the prime minister and the mayor, he is there,” answered Attal, France’s youngest ever prime minister, gesturing to Nice mayor Christian Estrosi.
A third boy asked Attal what his job was and if he was rich, then what he thought of the French president.
“Macron's mean,” the boy said looking at his feet, in comments caught on camera and broadcast on the BFMTV television channel.
Prevention
The Nice pilot programme is part of the government’s response to the days of rioting and looting that swept France last summer after the fatal shooting by police of a teenager of North African origin in a suburb of Paris.
Interior Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti, who accompanied Attal on Monday, said the programme would cater to youths “who are drifting but have not committed any acts of delinquency”.
“The idea here is not to punish, but to prevent,” he added. “The idea is to help you.”
Activities will include workshops on the values of the French Republic, learning the national anthem, and a trip to a nearby internment camp used by the Nazi-allied Vichy Regime during World War II.
Attal has called for greater use of boarding schools to prevent youths from falling into delinquency
“We have around 50,000 empty boarding places in France today, which is crazy when you think about it, even though we know that there are many parents who are overwhelmed and who could [see] an advantage in it,” he told reporters on Monday.
“During the year, we are going to place many more young people in boarding schools to prevent them from drifting, but also during the holidays,” he added. “Breakaway stays like this could be a solution."
‘Surge of authority’
The government's crackdown on youth violence has acquired new urgency in recent weeks amid a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, culminating in the fatal beating on April 4 of a 15-year-old in the town of Viry-Chatillon, outside Paris.
Visiting Viry-Chatillon last week, Attal announced a series of measures to combat what he described as an “addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”.
“There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault cases, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he said, calling for “a real surge of authority... to curb violence”.
Attal said measures would include expanding compulsory school attendance to all the days of the week from 8am to 6pm for children of college age. He said parents needed to take more responsibility, warning that particularly disruptive children would have sanctions marked on their final grades.
Promoting an old-fashioned back-to-basics approach to school authority, he said: “You break something – you repair it. You make a mess – you clear it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect."
Attal also floated the possibility of children in exceptional cases being denied the right to special treatment on account of their minority in legal cases.
Thus 16-year-olds could be forced to immediately appear in court after violations “like adults”, he said. In France, the age of majority is 18, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Far-right pressure
Critics of the government have accused it of recycling far-right ideas as it seeks to reclaim ground on security ahead of high-stakes European elections in June, with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally polling well ahead of the ruling party.
A poll this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally soaring ahead on 32.5 percent, with the government coalition way behind on 18 percent.
Attal, appointed by Macron in January to turn around the government’s fortunes, was seen as a telegenic asset in the battle against the far right.
But his own popularity ratings have been tanking in recent weeks, with the latest poll by Ipsos finding that 34 percent of people surveyed approved of his work in April, down four percent on March.
Macron and Attal now face an uphill struggle to reverse the tide ahead of the June 9 European polls, mindful that a major debacle would overshadow the rest of the president's second mandate up to 2027.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
