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Top French university loses funding over pro-Palestinian protests

The Paris region authority sparked controversy on Tuesday by temporarily suspending funding for Sciences Po, one of the country's most prestigious universities, after students took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:32 CEST

Top French university loses funding over pro-Palestinian protests

Protesters demonstrate near the entrance of a Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris) building occupied by students, in Paris on April 26, 2024. Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP

“I have decided to suspend all regional funding for Sciences Po until calm and security have been restored at the school,” Valerie Pécresse, the right-wing head of the greater Paris Île-de-France region, said on social media on Monday.

She took aim at “a minority of radicalised people calling for anti-Semitic hatred” and accused hard-left politicians of seeking to exploit the tensions.

Regional support for the Paris-based university includes €1 million earmarked for 2024, a member of Pécresse’s team told AFP.

On Tuesday, the university’s acting administrator, Jean Basseres, said he regretted the decision.

“The Ile-de-France region is an essential partner of Sciences Po, and I wish to maintain dialogue on the position expressed by Mrs Pécresse”, he told French daily Le Monde in an interview published Tuesday.

In an echo of tense demonstrations rocking many top US universities, students at Sciences Po have staged a number of protests, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.

University officials called in police to clear a protest last week. On Monday, police broke up a student protest demanding an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza at Sorbonne, another top French university.

Higher Education Minister Sylvie Retailleau said on Tuesday the French government had no plans to suspend funding for Sciences Po.

Speaking to broadcaster France 2, she estimated the state’s funding for the university at €75 million. She said there had been “no anti-Semitic remarks” and no violence had been committed during the demonstrations.

Both Basseres and Retailleau also said there were no plans to suspend Sciences Po’s collaboration with universities in Israel.

Critics on the left have denounced Pécresse’s announcement.

“It’s shameful and an absolute scandal,” said Mathilde Panot, the head of hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) deputies in parliament, adding the behaviour of the students was a “credit to the world and a credit to our country”.

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European elections: What are France’s têtes de liste?

European elections are coming up in the first week in June – and although under EU law all countries must use voting systems that ensure proportional representation, each individual country has its own rules for voting.

France operates a ‘closed list’ policy – which means that you vote for a party, rather than an individual candidate at these elections.

France used to divide its candidates into eight constituencies but these have now been abolished. Effectively, for the purposes of the European Parliamentary elections, France is a single constituency represented by 81 politicians – up from 79 at the last elections.

The number of MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) that each party gets is decided by the percentage of total votes that party receives. Parties must win at least 5 percent of the votes in order to send representatives to the Parliament.

Each party that plans to field candidates in the election supplies a list to France’s Interior Ministry. That full list was published in the Journal Officiel on Saturday, May 18th, and shows that 37 parties are fielding a total of 2,997 candidates to fill France’s allocation of seats.

In total, the post-election European Parliament will have 720 members, compared to 705 currently.

Tête de liste

The lists are defined by parties with their preferred candidates at the top – the first of these preferred candidates is the tête de liste (head of the list) and the de facto leader of the European election campaign.

For example, Valérie Hayer is the tête de liste of Emmanuel Macron’s party group Renaissance while Jordan Bardella is tête de liste for the group representing Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National.

These politicians will be the first to be elected to the European parliament for their respective parties, based on vote share – and as both parties are predicted to get well over five percent, they’re virtually guaranteed a place in the European Parliament.

The last name on RN’s list is party vice-president (and mayor of Perpignan) Louis Aliot – as he is 81st on the list, he would only become an MEP if RN got almost 100 percent of the votes in France.

But the nature of the party over personality vote has already led to an unusual dynamic. Intriguingly, it’s French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal – who is, unsurprisingly, not running for a seat at the European Parliament – who will debate Bardella live on France 2 on Thursday, May 23rd, rather than Hayer, the nominal top politician in the government-backed groups European election campaign.

Once elected, most MEPs decide to join a pan-European political group. Prior to this election, MEPs from French parties were aligned with six European political groups out of the seven that make up the Parliament.

What do the polls say?

According to an Ispos poll published on May 16th for Radio France and Le Parisien, 31 percent of those questioned said they were ready to vote for a list led by the far-right’s Jordan Bardella.

Centrist Hayer’s list ranks second, with around 16 percent of the intended votes, the centre-left Parti socialiste could collect 14.5 percent, followed by the far-left La France Insoumise at 8 percent, the right-wing Les Républicains at 7 percent while Les Ecologistes (green party) and the extreme-right Reconquête are projected to get 6.5 percent each.

Crucially, however, there’s not much French interest in the ballot, with only 45 percent of those questioned intending to vote, according to the Ipsos survey.

In 2019, voter turnout was 50.12 percent, up more than 7.5 percentage points on the previous ballot in 2014.

The lists in full

Below are the politicians chosen as ‘head of the list’ for their parties, listed in order of their current polling

Jordan Bardella – Rassemblement National

Valérie Hayer – Renaissance (the grouping of Macron’s LREM party plus centrist Horizons and MoDem parties)

Raphaël Glucksmann – Parti Socialiste

Manon Aubry – La France Insoumise

François-Xavier Bellamy – Les Républicains

Marie Toussaint – Les Ecologistes

Marion Maréchal – Recônquete

The below parties are projected to get below the 5 percent threshold, although there is always the possibility for an election surprise

Léon Deffontaines – Parti Communiste français

Hélène Thouy – Parti Animaliste

Jean Lasselle – Alliance rurale

Jean-Marc Governatori – Ecologie au centre

Nathalie Arthaud – Lutte ouvrière

Pierre Larrouturou – Nouvelle Donne – Allons Enfants

Florian Philippot – Les Patriotes

Selma Labib – Nouveau parti anticapitaliste – Révolutionnaires

François Asselineau – Populaire républicaine

Nagib Azergui – Free Palestine

Guillaume Lacroix – Parti radical de gauche

Yann Wehrling – Ecologie Positive & Territoires

Caroline Zorn – Parti pirate

M. Fidèl (believed to be a pseudonym) – Pour une humanité souveraine

Philippe Ponge – Mouvement constituant populaire

Olivier Terrien – Parti révolutionnaire Communistes

Audric Alexandre – Parti des citoyens européens

Marine Cholley – Equinoxe

Michel Simonin – Paix et décroissance

Jean-Marc Fortané – Pour une autre Europe

Georges Kuzmanovic – Nous le peuple

Camille Adoue – Parti des travailleurs

Edouard Husson – Non ! Prenons-nous en mains

Pierre-Marie Bonneau – Les Nationalistes

Charles Hoareau – Association nationale des communistes

Francis Lalanne – de la Résistance

Lorys Elmayan – La ruche citoyenne

Gaël Coste-Meunier – Droits du parent et de l’Infant

Hadama Traoré – Démocratie représentative

Laure Patas d’Illiers – Europe Démocratie Espéranto

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