ULB Students Blockade Campus Over Tuition Fee Hike

Students at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) staged a “blocage filtrant” — a filtering blockade — of their campus on Monday, protesting the end of a 15-year freeze on tuition fees and the latest version of the Paysage decree governing higher education in the French Community of Belgium. The action, organised alongside a public-sector strike by the CGSP union, is the latest flashpoint in a year-long wave of student mobilisation against the austerity measures of the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB) government.

The students say they are protesting “the rising cost of higher education,” the obstacles that weaken their studies, and political choices they argue deepen inequality and make young people pay the price of austerity. “While our universities need investment, we refuse that military service be presented as a horizon for our youth,” they said, according to RTBF.

A Day of Action, Not Just a Blockade

Monday’s programme went well beyond a simple picket. It included workshops, a photo exhibition, a collective fresco, a general assembly, silkscreen printing and banner-making, a solidarity meal, a decolonial campus tour and a concert. Organisers framed the mobilisation as a struggle tied both to education and to the defence of public services and social rights, calling on fellow students, staff and anyone who supports an accessible university to join the movement.

What Is Actually Changing

At the heart of the dispute is the minerval — the annual tuition fee. In its 2026 budget, the MR-Engages majority of the FWB decided to end the freeze that had held the standard fee at 835 euros since 2011, raising it to 1,194 euros, indexable. Under plans presented in 2025 by Minister-President Elisabeth Degryse, four tiers will apply from the 2026-2027 academic year: full free tuition for bursary students (about 22% of the student body), a reduced fee of 374 euros for “condition modeste” students, the existing 835 euros for 10% of students, and the new maximum of 1,194 euros for everyone else.

According to the Federation des etudiants francophones (FEF), the increase will affect 58% of higher-education students. For university students currently paying 835 euros, that represents a rise of roughly 30%; for some students in haute ecole institutions, the jump exceeds 200%.

“For a majority of students, the minerval will be more expensive tomorrow for the same quality of service,” FEF president Adam Assaoui said. “Not one cent of this increase will go to the institutions. It will all go to the FWB’s pocket.”

The ‘In-Between’ Students

Critics argue the reform’s income thresholds are too low and poorly account for students in a financial “between-two” situation — those from modest but non-eligible families, students living independently but still registered on a family household, and those from separated or blended families.

“In our view, the ceilings chosen are too low,” Assaoui said. “All families with two working parents and a child in higher education will have to pay 1,200 euros while they are already often on the razor’s edge.” The Ligue des familles has raised similar concerns about family situations it says are miscalculated by the government.

An Institution Divided From Its Government

The ULB’s own academic council has come out against the reform. In a motion adopted on 16 April and published the following day, the council reiterated the position of the CRef — the association of francophone rectors — calling for the decree to be postponed and, at minimum, for the conditions of access to intermediate tariffs to be revised.

The council framed the plan not as a fair measure but as “an austerity measure with dangerous and unpredictable consequences,” noting that per-student financing in FWB universities has fallen by more than 20% over 15 years and that spending per student lags 18% behind the European average. It also pointed to a 3.2 million-euro cut in university allocations for 2025 and to student work hours that have risen 57% in seven years, with roughly one in four students living below the poverty line.

The ARES, the higher-education research and teaching academy, warned in January that the timetable for implementing the reform was incompatible with a “calm rollout,” citing admission campaigns and the need to modify IT systems. The FEF has collected more than 49,000 signatures on a petition demanding the reform be abandoned.

A Long Tradition of Student Protest

Monday’s action is the newest chapter in a history of student mobilisation stretching back decades. As RTL Info recalled in a retrospective, a 1994 protest against the reorganisation of non-university higher education drew up to 30,000 students and led to a new law incorporating key student demands. A 1996 movement against cuts to secondary-school posts ran for months, while the 2010 protests for refinancing ultimately produced the very freeze on the minerval now being dismantled. In 2024, the previous Paysage decree provoked fresh mobilisation and transitional measures.

The current cycle has been building since March. On 4 March, more than 300 students gathered at the ULB, installing a fictitious 1,200-euro toll at the campus entrance to illustrate what the FEF called “the financial barrier that will stand at the gates of higher education” Bruxelles Today. Two weeks later, roughly 3,000 students marched from Brussels-Central station to the FWB government headquarters. Students occupied the ULB rectorate in mid-April. In July, the university announced strengthened financial aid for 2026-2027 to soften the blow.

What to Watch

The mobilisation is embedded in a broader wave of protest against austerity across Belgium, including a national demonstration on 9 October, a climate march of some 50,000 people and the CGSP strike that ran parallel to Monday’s blockade. That alignment gives the student movement a wider base — and a wider set of risks, as fringe violence around the 9 October march already demonstrated.

For now, the FEF is holding to its demand that the reform be withdrawn outright, pointing to the government’s refusal to negotiate on income thresholds. “The mobilisation is growing every day,” Assaoui said. Whether that pressure can reopen a negotiation the FWB executive has so far kept closed is the question that will define the coming weeks — and, for tens of thousands of students, the cost of their next academic year.