320,000 people take to the streets across France for third weekend of protests

LAST UPDATE | 9 hrs ago

SOME 320,000 PEOPLE rallied across France on Saturday, said the interior ministry, while tensions flared in several cities including Marseille and Toulouse.

In Paris, some 70,000 people turned up, according to the capital’s police. The third day of nationwide protests by trade unions, students and Yellow Vest activists drew a smaller crowd in Paris than the previous weekend, when an estimated 110,000 people took to the streets.

This is the third consecutive weekend of protests over living costs and education, deploying 70,000 police and gendarmes and pushing the Paris march to the capital’s edge as youth-led demonstrations spread across Europe.

Police arrested more than 290 people across France on Saturday as hundreds of thousands demonstrated against soaring prices, inequality and police violence.

“The marches proceeded smoothly within the framework of the declared demonstrations,” the ministry said, while noting that “radical elements” in several cities, including Bordeaux, Toulouse and Marseille, had attempted to enter city centres “with the aim of carrying out vandalism and looting”.

Paris police banned union and yellow vest marches through the city centre on Friday, ordering demonstrations to follow a single route along the capital’s outer boulevards, from Porte de Bagnolet to Porte de Charenton. Unions and student groups challenged the restrictions in court.

President Emmanuel Macron said marches on Monday would stay out of city centres to protect shops.

Advertisement

Authorities counted about 550,000 marchers on 17 October, when rioters looted hundreds of shops, and 410,000 last Saturday, when protests were largely peaceful, but police made more than 1,300 arrests.

In Germany, a youth initiative called “Gen Z regelt” – roughly “Gen Z’s got this” – urged protests in some 30 cities “for education, health, climate protection and an affordable life,” and against any return of military conscription.

Organisers said more than 140,000 people signed up online.

Berlin police expect about 10,000 people at the Brandenburg Gate. Some shops on the Kurfuerstendamm boulevard boarded up windows, although authorities said they were unaware of specific threats of violence.

In Barcelona, Spain, Catalan police planned their highest-level alert after an anonymous TikTok network called Blocus urged new gatherings. Rioting there last Saturday led to about 130 arrests, mostly of minors.

Italian police were on alert after clashes in Milan, Turin and Bologna, and calls to protest circulated on TikTok in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal.