Latest: The fourth Saturday of protests drew far fewer people than the Saturdays before it. The interior minister’s office said about 7,000 people had joined 68 actions outside Paris by 14:00, against 15,000 at the same stage on October 31, 37,000 on October 24 and 67,000 on October 17, and described the situation nationwide as calm and under control, with 18 arrests by that hour and more than 15,600 preventive checks carried out. In Paris the main procession, made up mostly of young people, left Place de la Republique shortly after 14:00 heading for Place de la Nation. About a hundred Yellow Vests gathered at the Place de la Concorde despite the ban, were encircled by riot police and had their identities checked, and two organisers, Benjamin Ball and Azelma Sigaux, were detained near the National Assembly. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s social conference with employers and unions is on Monday, and the union coalition meets after it to decide how the mobilisation continues.
Earlier: France is bracing for a fourth weekend of mass demonstrations on Saturday, as the student-led protest wave over the cost of living and the state of the country’s schools enters a second month. Students and labor unions called an authorized march through central Paris on Saturday afternoon, while the Yellow Vests declined to join it and called instead for “mass disobedience” at the Place de la Concorde, near parliament and the Elysee Palace, in an event the authorities have banned.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said 70,000 police and security forces will be deployed across the country over the weekend. The deployment follows a nationwide strike on Thursday that brought more than 600 arrests, and rioting on October 17 that caused more than one billion euros of damage to public and private property. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu is scheduled to meet trade and employee unions on Monday, and an inter-union statement on Friday said the protests will end only when the government answers demands on wages, pensions and school funding that unions have put forward for several weeks.