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France prepared Saturday for a third consecutive weekend of protests over living costs and education, deploying 70,000 police and gendarmes and rerouting the Paris march to the capital’s edge as youth-led demonstrations spread across Europe.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez warned of a “very high risk” of disorder, especially after dark on Halloween.
Paris police banned union and “yellow vest” marches through the city centre, 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 but lost in a last-minute legal battle.
Teachers formed a line to shield students from police in Paris, as countrywide protests over education reform have reached their fourth week.
President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that marches would stay out of city centres to protect shops.
Police also barred entry to Place de la République and Les Halles, both hit by rioting and looting on Oct. 17, Saturday night into Sunday morning.
Unaccompanied minors face a separate 9 p.m. curfew around the Champs-Élysées. A Paris court on Wednesday suspended an earlier curfew on minors as a serious and illegal infringement of freedom of movement.
Protesters scuffle with riot police during a demonstration against rising living costs, in Paris on Oct. 17. (Emma Da Silva/The Associated Press)
The movement began with high school students protesting school conditions and broadened into anger over living costs.
Authorities counted about 550,000 protesters nationwide on Oct. 17, when rioters looted hundreds of shops, and 410,000 last Saturday, when rallies 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. Organizers said more than 140,000 people had signed up online.
Berlin police expected about 10,000 people at the Brandenburg Gate. Some shops on the Kurfürstendamm boulevard boarded up their windows, although authorities said they were unaware of specific threats of violence. Protests were expected to begin in the early afternoon.
In Barcelona, Catalan police planned to activate their highest-level alert after an anonymous TikTok network called Blocus urged new gatherings. Rioting in the Spanish city 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.
