France will mobilise 70,000 police officers and gendarmes for the demonstrations planned on Saturday, October 31, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced on Thursday, according to BFM. Speaking as the government braces for another weekend of social unrest, Nuñez said marches would be authorised "outside city centres" and that prefects would decide case by case whether gatherings could go ahead.
The deployment matches the one used on October 24, which the minister described as an exceptional arrangement being repeated for a day he characterised as carrying a very high risk of public order disturbances. He said the same rules that applied last Saturday would govern Saturday's events.
Why it matters
The weekend mobilisation comes amid sustained anger that began in lycées and has widened into a broader protest movement over the cost of living. A coordination of yellow vest activists and trade unions has called for a new day of social action on Saturday, BFM reports. How the authorities handle the marches will be closely watched, particularly after violence at demonstrations on October 17 and 18 that left many officers injured and prompted a parliamentary inquiry.
Nuñez told BFM that 1,193 members of the security forces have been hurt since the lycée unrest began. He said most of the injuries were minor but that some officers had been hospitalised with very serious wounds.
Unions challenge Paris route in court
The dispute over Saturday's Paris march has moved to the courts. The inter-union grouping said it had filed a route from Bastille to Nation with the Paris police prefecture, but that officials responded by offering an alternative from Porte de Bagnolet to Porte de Charenton. In a statement, the unions accused the prefecture of dangerous manoeuvring that obstructs the constitutional right to demonstrate, and said they would hold a press conference on Friday morning. According to franceinfo, employee and student unions are taking the prefecture to court over the imposed route.
Nuñez said prefects would rule on whether gatherings may proceed, and that any unauthorised assembly would be broken up with arrests. He said officers had been instructed to apply a doctrine of extreme firmness to disperse or detain at-risk groups.
The minister also pointed to calls circulating online for gatherings around 8pm on Saturday, which coincides with Halloween. He attributed those appeals to a radicalised far-left milieu and said they would be banned by prefects. Le Figaro reported that the interior ministry is preparing its forces for a Halloween period it views as especially volatile.
Nuñez said the arrangements used to protect shops in city centres would be renewed, along with those guarding retail parks on the outskirts of cities. He cited risks of disorder in peripheral areas as the reason marches were being kept away from the centre.
Students leave meeting unsatisfied
Student organisations were received at the interior ministry on Thursday. Sabrine Kharbach, a spokesperson for the Union étudiante, said after the meeting that the group would keep protesting while police enter universities, and that it would be in the streets on Saturday and again on November 5. She accused the government of preventing people from demonstrating.
Separately, the Occitanie region announced it would launch a platform on November 9 allowing lycée students to report day-to-day difficulties directly, so the region can respond more quickly. Carole Delga, the region's socialist president, said the tool, called Direct lycée, would start in 28 pilot schools across the region's 13 departments before being extended to all 226 lycées in early 2027.
In Marseille, the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture will impose a curfew on unaccompanied minors in certain areas from 11pm to 5am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, BFM reported. The zones are the same ones covered by an earlier curfew imposed after the violence of October 17.
Nuñez is due to appear before the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the October 17 and 18 violence on Tuesday, November 3, BFM learned. He will be the first witness heard by the panel, following the usual government question session.
Earlier in the week, Emmanuel Macron called for calm and for classes to resume when schools reopen on Monday.
What to watch: whether the Paris march goes ahead on the route the unions requested or the one offered by the prefecture, and how the courts rule on the dispute before Saturday.
