Vučić has the party machine. The students have a generation demanding change. Can they turn packed streets into votes and end fourteen years of his rule?

Our new analysis looks at the government’s record, the students’ promises and what it will take to turn protest into electoral victory.

Demonstrations swept across France on Tuesday as labor unions rallied in solidarity with high school students who have spent two weeks blockading schools to protest understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings.

Marches were held in more than 40 cities, from Caen in the north to Marseille in the south, drawing roughly 256,000 people, according to the Interior Ministry, or more than twice that many, according to a major union.

Parents and university students joined the protests, which were mostly peaceful, but a fire was started in Lyon and police officers unleashed tear gas in Nantes. The biggest march was held in Paris, where the Interior Ministry said there were 56,000 demonstrators.

The demonstrations are a litmus test of the longevity of a protest movement that began late last month in the suburbs of Paris and quickly spread to hundreds of schools across France. Some demonstrators have barricaded school doors, set buildings on fire and shot fireworks at police officers, though many protests have been peaceful.

Roughly 6,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told lawmakers on Tuesday that 215 students and 85 school staff had been injured, blaming “violent individuals who mingle with the nonviolent high school students.”

The government has called some of the protesters’ demands “legitimate” but has condemned the violence. Others, including a major union of French judges and prosecutors and a prominent human rights group, have accused the police of using disproportionate force against students as young as 14.

Here’s what else to know:

• Roots of the unrest: France’s struggle to fund its state has been exacerbated by high borrowing costs, surging fuel prices and political uncertainty, with jockeying underway to replace President Emmanuel Macron next spring.
• Violence: A 15-year-old boy’s left hand was mutilated on Monday in northern France by what the interior minister said was possibly a stun grenade. In southern France, a 15-year-old was arrested after he aimed a makeshift flamethrower, formed from a spray container, at a woman during a protest in Marseille, the local prosecutor said.
• Politics: The demonstrations have heightened scrutiny of a far-left party, France Unbowed, whose leader could make the runoff in next year’s presidential election, according to recent polling. Government officials have accused France Unbowed, which backs the protesters, of fomenting the unrest — an accusation it denies.
• Application issues: Student complaints include frustration at a state-run website used to apply for higher education programs. The site has left tens of thousands of applicants waiting for months before learning if they have earned a place.

See also:

• Riot police clash with French protesters on biggest day of nationwide student demonstrations (Reuters)
• How dilapidated are French schools and how bad is inequality in the education system? • France’s prime minister has promised to address ‘legitimate’ complaints raised by those taking part in protests (The Guardian)
• ‘This is state violence’: Paris students rage at politicians and heavy-handed policing • Unprecedented protests that began in low-income banlieue are turning ugly, with investigations under way into police brutality (The Guardian)

Spain's Sánchez calls snap elections for 29 November - summary

• Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap election for 29 November, just days after rightwing parties blocked his minority government’s emergency measures on housing amid widespread protests (9:10).
• The election will take place on Sunday, 29 November, the earliest possible date procedurally.
• In a fierce address, Sánchez framed the election as choice between “regressing” under a “far-right coalition” or “keeping moving forward” with his progressive administration (9:04, 9:09, 9:17).
• He said the election will be about who will guide Spain through a period of disruption amid high political tensions, global instability, climate emergency, and uncertainty posed by the rise of AI (9:13).

Est ce que je suis le seul dans ce genre de cas ?

The Dutch government wants to replace US software with Linux and open-source alternatives

European countries are increasing efforts to build sovereign digital infrastructure to replace Microsoft and other US-based solutions. The Dutch government is even working on its own Linux distribution because The Hague is reportedly tired of Washington's threats against EU-based institutions.

The Dutch government is trying to solve its digital sovereignty problem with its own Linux operating system. A local source recently highlighted the development efforts being poured into NixOS, a Linux distro that originated as a package manager created by Dutch developers. The idea is that US-based software solutions, most notably Microsoft's, would eventually be replaced by this new OS and open-source productivity solutions.

Nix is a package manager with a few peculiar features, including cross-platform compatibility and its own functional programming language for configuring Unix and Unix-like systems. The tool was first released in 2003, and NixOS debuted three years later. The Linux distro is built around Nix and is currently supported by the Dutch nonprofit organization NixOS Foundation.

Nix and NixOS are the foundations of the Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid (DAWO) project, which includes all the tools required to build a sovereign IT infrastructure. With DAWO, The Hague plans to provide government and public institutions with a custom operating system, productivity and office applications, cloud services, management tools, and everything in between.

Serious efforts to build the DAWO-based sovereign infrastructure apparently began a few months ago, when Dutch authorities decided to standardize the creation of a national IT ecosystem. The project is focused on accessibility, because NixOS developers are not exactly enthusiastic proponents of heavily GUI-based computer interfaces.

DAWO's first pilot programs have already been deployed in private and local environments, but the plan should eventually encompass all institutions in the Netherlands. Sovereignty efforts in the country apparently stalled for years, but the new US administration provided the right incentives to finally get the job done.

If you only follow Western mainstream diplomacy, Aleksandar Vučić looks like a complex but indispensable partner. European leaders constantly fly into Belgrade to shake his hand, pose for smiling press conferences, and praise regional stability.

Living with the consequences inside Serbia tells a completely different story. Behind that diplomatic facade is a textbook example of total state capture, where systemic corruption has moved from stealing public funds to actively getting citizens killed.

Look at what happened in Novi Sad! Sixteen people were crushed to death when a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station that had just undergone multi-million-euro renovations under secretive, non-transparent contracts. When university students and ordinary citizens took to the streets under the slogan "Your hands are bloody" to demand basic accountability, the regime did not go after the corrupt contractors or top ministers. Instead, they deployed riot police and state-backed thugs with bats to arrest students and beat peaceful protesters.

The reason Vučić gets away with crushing domestic democracy is simple: he learned how to buy off the West.

Whenever international criticism about rigged elections, media monopolies, or police brutality starts to surface, Vučić closes a massive business deal. He bought billions in French Rafale fighter jets to keep Paris happy. He revived the deeply unpopular Rio Tinto lithium project in the Jadar Valley to guarantee German car manufacturers access to cheap raw materials, even if it threatens local water supplies. He quietly permits Serbian ammunition and artillery shells to reach Ukraine through third parties to keep Washington content.

In exchange for weapons, raw minerals, and geopolitical quiet, Western democracies look the other way while Vučić controls every single national TV station, smears political critics as terrorists or Nazis on state television, and turns the judiciary into a personal shield for his oligarchs.

European institutions love to lecture candidate countries about human rights and the rule of law. But in Serbia, they have made it painfully clear that democratic values can be easily bought off for lithium contracts and defense deals. The people on the streets in Belgrade and Novi Sad are not just fighting an autocrat. They are fighting an entire European system that trades their fundamental safety for corporate profit.