France Protests: 565 Arrested, Gendarme Set Ablaze
The Interior Ministry counts 320,000 marchers, fewer than on recent weekends, but clashes in Paris and about ten other cities ended in hundreds of arrests.
France took to the streets for a third weekend in a row on Saturday, October 31, over the cost of living and the state of its schools, and by evening the marches in Paris and about ten other cities had turned into clashes with police. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that 565 people had been arrested nationwide by 9 p.m. For Serbia, which ties its future to European Union membership, this is not a distant story: France is the eurozone’s second-largest economy and one of its leading members, and its government is getting a first bad grade from the financial markets in the same week.
How many people marched, and how many were arrested?
According to the Interior Ministry, about 320,000 people were on the streets, 70,000 of them in Paris. The organizers, a coalition of high school and student groups and trade unions, put the figure at nearly 500,000, including 200,000 in the capital. By the official count, turnout is shrinking: last Saturday there were 410,000 participants, and on October 17, when demonstrators looted shops in Paris and across the country, about 550,000.
The arrest toll climbed through the day. Earlier reports mentioned at least 290 people in custody, and by 9 p.m. the ministry was counting 565. In Paris, four police officers and one gendarme were injured, three of them burned by Molotov cocktails.
The worst incident came at the end of the Paris march near the Porte de Charenton, where a Molotov cocktail landed on the shield of a mobile gendarmerie officer and set it alight. Colleagues put out the flames, and Nunez said the gendarme was lightly hurt. The minister described the attack this way:
“When you throw a Molotov cocktail at a police cordon, I call that attempted murder.”
Nunez also rejected claims that the marches had passed peacefully, as television news tickers had reported, he said: “No, there was enormous tension, enormous violence, and it had to be dealt with.” He added: “The security forces held firm and protected the city centers. Public order has been maintained.”
Where did the clashes happen?
The Paris march was diverted to the outer boulevards on the eastern edge of the city after the Council of State upheld a ban on the traditional route from Bastille to Nation, and the unions lost their challenge. More than 40 metro and regional RER stations were closed, and about 70,000 police officers and gendarmes were deployed across the country. Officers carried out 40,000 checks on roads and at stations, 15,000 of them in the Paris region.
Nunez listed groups of a few hundred people who tried to break through police lines, using mortar fireworks and cobblestones, in Paris, Montpellier, Toulouse, Rennes, Marseille, Nantes, Angers and Tours. In Lyon, police fired tear gas. In Toulouse they used a water cannon against an unauthorized march of several thousand people, and in Marseille the clashes began in the late afternoon on Boulevard Chave, at the end of an unregistered march. The ministry says “radical elements” also tried to break away from the columns in Bordeaux.
A curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. was imposed for Saturday and Sunday in the Paris districts of Republique and Chatelet-Les Halles, and face coverings were banned, which also covered Halloween masks.
What is behind the protests?
The movement began in late September, when high school students took to the streets over run-down buildings, a shortage of teachers and a university admissions system they consider unfair to pupils from poorer families. Trade unions joined them, along with a smaller number of supporters of the yellow vest movement. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s government held talks with student organizations this week and is weighing measures to ease the cost of living.
One participant, 15-year-old pupil Aaron Berthier de Grandry from Nogent-sur-Marne, said he had been told as a child that young people are the future:
“When we, as the future of France, are denied the means, it means France will collapse.”
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon led the Paris march and said President Emmanuel Macron “will have to give in or leave”.
Why does this add pressure on Macron and public finances?
The unrest comes as the rating agency Fitch unexpectedly cut its outlook on French debt to negative on Friday and data showed the economy shrank in the third quarter. Public debt stands near 120 percent of gross domestic product and borrowing costs are rising, which leaves the government little room to answer the protests with money. The chamber of commerce estimates that merchants’ losses over three weeks of unrest have passed one billion euros.
Fewer than six months remain until the presidential election, and Marine Le Pen leads in the polls.
Did the wave spread to Germany?
The “Gen Z regelt” initiative organized protests on the same day in about 30 German cities and says 120,000 people turned out. In Frankfurt, rioters smashed shop windows and looted stores, including a gun shop, according to local police, and threw stones, bottles and Molotov cocktails at officers. In Cologne and Hamburg, police used water cannons.
In France, students have announced blockades of high schools and universities from Tuesday, and the unions have called a strike and demonstrations for November 5.
