France prepared for a third consecutive weekend of protests over living costs and education on Saturday, deploying 70,000 police and gendarmes and pushing Paris marches to the fringes of the capital as youth-led demonstrations spread across Europe.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned that the “risk of unrest is very high”, especially after dark on Halloween.
Paris police on Friday banned union and yellow vest marches from marching through the city center and ordered demonstrations to follow a single route along the capital’s outer boulevards, from Porte Bagnolet to the Porte de Charente. Unions and student groups challenged the restrictions in court.
President Macron said Monday’s march would be kept away from the city center to protect shops.
Police also banned people from entering Place de la République and Les Halles, where rioting and looting took place between 11pm and 6am on Saturday and Sunday October 17.
Unaccompanied minors around the Champs Elysees will face a separate 9pm curfew.
A Paris court on Wednesday suspended an earlier curfew for minors, calling it a serious and unlawful violation of freedom of movement.
The movement began with high school students protesting school conditions and later expanded into anger over the cost of living.
Authorities calculated that on October 17, rioters looted hundreds of stores and about 550,000 people marched; on Saturday, the protests were largely peaceful, but police arrested more than 1,300 people and 410,000 people marched.
In Germany, a youth initiative called “Gen Z regelt” – roughly “Generation Z gets it” – urged protests in some 30 cities “for education, health, climate protection and affordable living” and to oppose any reintroduction of conscription.
Organizers said more than 140,000 people have registered online.
Berlin police expected about 10,000 people to attend the Brandenburg Gate. Some shops on Kurfürstendamm had their windows boarded up, but authorities said they were unaware of specific threats of violence.
In Barcelona, Spain, Catalan police planned to activate the highest level of alert after an anonymous TikTok network called Blocus urged new rallies.
Riots there last Saturday resulted in the arrests of about 130 people, mostly minors.
Italian police were on alert after clashes in Milan, Turin and Bologna, while calls for protests also circulated on TikTok in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal.