Liège student protests against education reforms lead to four arrests

Friday demonstrations and unrest

Secondary school students gathered before 08:00 on Friday outside several schools in Liège, including Liège Atlas, Liège 1, Athénée de Chênée, and Athénée de Fragnée. Police reported that turnout peaked between 500 and 600 participants in the city during the morning. Protesters marched through Place des Déportés and Rue Hors-Château into the city center around 10:00, causing vehicle congestion along Quai Saint-Léonard. Groups of demonstrators attempted to force entry into several schools, overturned street furniture, and threw objects at school buildings. Several commercial storefronts sustained damage, including blows to the entrance of a JD Sports store.

Unrest escalated late in the morning near Sainte-Véronique, where demonstrators broke multiple school windows and pushed over safety barriers before heading toward the Guillemins railway station. Around 11:30, a group burned a bicycle and electric scooters on Esplanade Saint-Léonard. On Rue de Fragnée, protesters ignited cardboard tubes and launched them toward police officers and teachers. Teachers and peaceful students formed a human chain to separate aggressive demonstrators from law enforcement and prevent clashes, though officers were pelted with stones near Athénée de Fragnée before pushing back the crowd. At 12:20, a gathering at Place Saint-Lambert forced local public transit operator TEC to temporarily suspend tram traffic across the central Saint-Lambert, Magin, and Opéra sectors.

Student demands and organization

The mobilization follows earlier rallies on Thursday, 1 October, during which municipal authorities reported six arrests, including five judicial detentions. Friday police records registered four additional arrests, consisting of three judicial detentions and one administrative detention. Student organizers described the demonstrations as a spontaneous campaign coordinated directly between schools to resist planned spending reductions in the education system.

Robin, a student at the Saint-Luc institute and one of the organizers, stated that participants are demanding the withdrawal of education reforms, higher teaching quality, and reduced workloads for teachers. He also pointed to opposition to public spending on military armaments and called for lower bus fares, noting that the student body intended to build a broader, peaceful movement despite earlier property damage.

This plan for society does not suit us.

Ministerial response and school reopening plans

Education Minister Valérie Glatigny condemned the violent incidents on Friday and urged pupils to return to their classrooms. She stated that while students have the right to express disagreement, the violence was unacceptable. She warned that outside figures and radical factions were manipulating school pupils, comparing the tactics to recent protest methods observed in France.

Everyone obviously has the right to contest a decision, to protest and to make their disagreement heard. But nothing can justify violence.

Glatigny defended the government's budgetary choices, stating that spending reductions were necessary to guarantee teacher salaries, maintain investment in facilities, and avoid passing public debt to younger generations. She noted that the Wallonia-Brussels Federation ranks among the top five OECD jurisdictions for education funding. In response to closures across the free and municipal school networks on Friday, the Mayor of Liège and the local police chief scheduled weekend meetings with school governing boards to prepare the return of students on Monday, 5 October.

Actions in surrounding municipalities

Protest actions extended beyond Liège into neighboring towns across the province on Friday morning. In Huy, approximately 70 students walked through the town center from school to school, with local police deploying officers while participants discharged firecrackers and smoke bombs. Firefighters in Ans reported local scuffles, and additional gatherings took place at the IPES secondary school in Herstal. Local municipal officials in Liège affirmed that communal secondary schools had suspended classes on Friday following closures in the free school network, with no injuries reported across the two days of protests.