BRUSSELS, June 4 (Reuters) – Clashes broke out between protesters and police in Brussels on Thursday, as a demonstration against planned reforms to \u200cpart of Belgium’s education sector turned violent.<\/p>\n
Police used tear gas against \u200cprotesters in the city centre, which was strewn with debris and vandalised bicycles and street signs. \u200bSome windows had been smashed. Brussels police advised people to avoid the area around the city’s main railway station.<\/p>\n
Belgian media also reported protests in other French-speaking cities, including Namur and Charleroi, though they were mostly calmer than those in Brussels.<\/p>\n
Belgium’s \u200cFrench Community government, which oversees \u2060French-language education, plans to increase annual tuition fees for higher education to \u20ac1,194 ($1,280) from \u20ac835 for the majority of students.<\/p>\n
Although still low \u2060by international standards, it represents a 35% increase, which the government says is part of a cost-cutting drive and brings fees broadly into line with those in \u200bFlemish, Dutch-speaking \u200buniversities.<\/p>\n
Other proposed measures include requiring teachers \u200bwith pupils in the final years \u200cof secondary school to take on two extra classroom hours per week without additional pay, and revising tenure rules.<\/p>\n
“We will have to work more for the same wages, and working conditions will deteriorate, with more people having larger classes”, one teacher attending the protest who gave her name only as Marie \u200ctold Belgian broadcaster VRTNWS.<\/p>\n
At a press briefing \u200bon Thursday, French Community government leader Elisabeth Degryse \u200bdefended the fee increase in \u200bthe face of strained public finances, adding that the government \u200cwas heading for a 1.9 billion \u200beuro deficit.<\/p>\n
“Our aim with \u200bthese measures is to free up money to re-invest in the sector”, Education Minister Valerie Glatigny.<\/p>\n
The parliament of the French Community is expected \u200bto vote on the \u200cproposed cost-cutting measures later on Thursday.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8593 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Bart Biesemans and \u200bYiming Woo, Writing by Sudip-Kar Gupta and Charlotte Van Campenhotu; \u200bediting by Barbara Lewis and Gareth Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS, June 4 (Reuters) – Clashes broke out between protesters and police in Brussels on Thursday, as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[12292,7,18,12291],"class_list":["post-19085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgian-media","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-education-sector"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116692066424543509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}