Are the student protests being manipulated on the eve of the French presidential election?

France's prime minister has said student anger is being weaponized as unions and other protesters prepare to take to the streets.

The French's passion for protest is legendary in Europe.

Over the past few years, we've regularly seen farmers outraged by expensive laws that dump manure at local municipal offices, while masked youths periodically throw homemade grenades at riot police in underprivileged suburbs.

For more than three weeks now, thousands of students have blocked the entrance to high schools and taken their grievances to the streets.

This Saturday, hundreds of new demonstrations have been announced across France.

Trade unions and key figures of the so-called "yellow vest" movement are expected to join the students.

French Prime Minister Sébastien LeCorneau said this week that student anger was being manipulated as politics heated up ahead of next year's presidential election.

The Yellow Jackets (Yellow Vests) protested against rising living costs for more than a year in 2018, becoming one of the longest-running protest movements in French history.

Jérôme Rodríguez, a prominent Yellow Jelly activist, has used Instagram to encourage people to join Saturday's protests.

He said in a video that the protests should give voice to those who "want to be able to live with dignity, no longer have to count every cent, and no longer have to choose between eating and driving."

He added: "Anger does not have a political party. An empty refrigerator does not have a political party."

So what's going on in the EU, the second largest economy?

Social unrest, government borrowing costs at record highs, a deeply divided French parliament and a revolving door of apparently angry French prime ministers - six in the past five years - all claim to want to reduce their country's public debt.

Is France at breaking point - and what does it all mean for the eurozone currency, of which the French are a big part?

"You can't compare France to the Greek debt crisis in 2012 or Argentina in 2001. And the financial markets know that," economist Anne-Laur Delat told me.

He is a CNRS researcher in the economics department of Paris Dauphine University. A well-known figure in French media debates about the bad state of the country's public debt.

"Markets already recognized in 2024 that after the [snap] election, the parliament is sharply divided between three [opposition political] blocs, but they also realized that France is a big country with the ability to raise taxes if necessary."

"Our situation is more like Britain in 2023 with Leasing Terrace," suggested Delatt, referring to the then-British Prime Minister's small budget, which saw the pound fall sharply, government bond yields rise and mortgage rates rise.

The crisis was relatively short-lived as markets recognized that Britain had the financial means to fix itself.

It's painful here in France, but a 4% increase in VAT will raise 120 billion. Euros are needed to pay off the government's debt. Investors know that."

Maybe, in theory. And as Delat also points out, the European Central Bank is likely to intervene if France's finances fall to the extent that other European economies are affected.

But with many French citizens now clearly unhappy with the status quo, imagine the reaction if taxes were raised or welfare and education budgets were cut.

France's national motto is Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Liberty, Equality and Fraternity), but that's certainly not the feeling you get on the streets and in viral social media posts.

This week I saw 17-year-old Maxim, Madeleine and Elodie sitting on large green trash cans that have been used to block the entrance to their high school as part of a weeks-long protest.

It was bad enough here, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, with holes in classroom walls, bloated class sizes and understaffing, they told me, but they said the teenagers were more aware that the situation was much worse in the deprived suburbs of their capital.

They told me, "France likes to talk about equality, but the reality is that the poor are prejudiced here, while the rich benefit."

None of them will be old enough to vote in France's presidential election next spring, but they question whether the changing face of politicians in power has made all the difference.

On a large scale, the protests seemed the only way to be heard by the French authorities, three young women told me.

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They are part of a rebellious French tradition.

"Si vous n'êtes pas contents, manifestez, criez, hurlez, mais ne subissez pas," declared cultural icon Victor Hugo, the 19th-century author of the French Revolution classic Les Misérables, who was also an activist of the French Republic.

("If you're not happy, protest, shout, shout, but don't give in and give in.")

Among the throngs of protesting students walking through Paris on Thursday, I encountered a number of mothers wearing placards that read: "Mothers in solidarity."

I asked, were they there to protest or protect their children? "Both!" The answer was decisive.

Gwen, 37, said she and other mothers took turns coordinating students and police at their local school's lockdown each morning.

It comes after allegations of police brutality escalated, denied by France's interior ministry, during protests earlier this month that left hundreds injured and a 15-year-old boy lost his arm in the city of Lens.

France's interior minister has since suspended police use of stun grenades at high school protests.

Gwen told me she didn't mind her son missing weeks of school because of the locks.