French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced measures on Thursday to crack down on teenage violence in and around schools, as the government tries to regain ground on far-right security two months before European elections.
France has been rocked in recent weeks by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particular the fatal beating earlier this month of 15-year-old Shemseddine on the outskirts of Paris.
The issue has come to a head with the far-right National Reunion (RN) accusing Attal of not doing enough on security issues, while the anti-immigration party outperforms the government coalition in polls for the June 9 elections.
Speaking in Viry-Chatillon, the town where Shemseddine was murdered, Attal condemned the “addiction of some of our teenagers to violence”, calling for “a real increase in authority… to curb the violence”.
“There are twice as many teenagers involved in assault cases, four times as many in drug trafficking and seven times as many in armed robberies as in the general population,” he said, also noting the rise of “Islamic” influences.
The measures will include expanding mandatory school attendance to every day of the week, from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm, for university-age children.
“During the day, the place to be is at school, working and learning,” said Attal, who was also completing 100 days in office since being appointed in January by President Emmanuel Macron to turn around the government’s fortunes.
– Teaching respect –
Parents needed to take on more responsibility, Attal said, 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 fix it. You make a mess – you clean it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect.”
Attal also suggested the possibility that children, in exceptional cases, could be denied the right to special treatment due to their minority status in legal proceedings.
So 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 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Macron and Attal face an uphill fight to turn the tide ahead of the European elections. Current polls point to the risk of a major disaster that would overshadow the rest of the president’s second term until 2027.
A survey carried out this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed RN with 32.5 percent, with the coalition government well behind, with 18 percent.
bpa-leo-sjw/jj
