France on edge; Fears grow ahead of the weekend; Minors wrecking everything in their path VIDEO

The minister told RTL today that he had asked prosecutors to hold parents civilly liable for damage caused by their children during the high school blockade movement, so that they would “pay compensation.”

“It is not the minor who pays, but the parents. Today, this is also the parents’ responsibility,” the minister said, a day after meeting with prosecutors general, adding that this response is “much more useful than detention.”

Parents, he emphasized, must bear parental responsibility.

“What are 15- or 16-year-old teenagers doing when they destroy bus stops or attack the principal of their school?” he said.

He added that when someone vandalizes high schools, destroys bus stops or attacks public transportation, parents are now being held civilly liable.

The minister expressed hope that judges would approve the prosecutors’ requests.

The high school student movement has, over the past few days, evolved from “high school protests” into a public-order issue, he said.

Since the blockades began, around 2,000 people have been arrested, of whom 90 percent are minors, while one-third were arrested for violence against people, Darmanin said.

He sharply criticized the “violent minority,” saying that he was not entirely sure they were even high school students.

He added that he feared “urban violence” tonight, during the upcoming weekend, and on the day of the national mobilization on Tuesday, October 6.

Darmanin also criticized officials from the left-wing LFI party, accusing them of seeking to take control of the high school movement and encouraging violence.

He called Manuel Bompard, the movement’s coordinator, a “firefighter-arsonist, just like Mr. Mélenchon.”

Regarding Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the LFI candidate for the 2027 presidential election, the justice minister said that he had delivered “extremely violent speeches” before “changing his tone too late.”