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France takes to the streets for the second act of the mobilization that united students, yellow vests and trade unions last Saturday.
Anger and the desire to react to the devastation, looting and destruction of public buildings that occurred on the sidelines of the demonstrations dominated the week, with President Emmanuel Macron calling for a hard line against the culprits who were arrested and now on direct trial. On the front line, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, who spoke of “calls on social media to carry out violent acts and looting”, has daily assured the commitment that the security forces will put into preventing a repeat of the incidents of a week ago, with 3,000 shops damaged, burned or looted, a town hall destroyed in Limoges, and hundreds of millions in damages.
Pursuing this aim, the authorities, with Macron in the lead, have restricted the field of freedom to demonstrate in an unprecedented way, decreeing that only protests called by trade unions will be allowed. The opposition spoke of “freedom-killing” behaviour, Le Monde in its editorial illustrates “The dangers of renouncing public liberties”. And the leaders of several left-wing parties have presented urgent appeals to the Council of State against the directive to the prefects announced on Friday by Macron, which led to the ban on taking to the streets in cities such as Lyon, Metz, Nancy, Besançon.
In extremis, a path was agreed for the event to take place in Marseille, which had initially fallen under the ax of bans. In Paris, the agreement for a demonstration along the more classic route, from Bastille to Nation, was found between the secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, and the prefect. The yellow vests, who wanted to march from the Bastille to the historic centre, concluding the procession in place de l’Opéra, were instead refused due to the evident impossibility of managing riots at the end of the demonstration in the streets of luxury, between jewelers and stylists, between the Opéra and place Vendôme.
For Act II, high school and university students, who had been at the origin of the protest, no longer appear to be the driving force – as at the beginning: tomorrow falls in the middle of the school holidays at the end of October-beginning of November, the very young will necessarily be less present. Furthermore, this evening, the representatives of all the student organizations were received at the Elysée by Macron with discreet results: the mobilization continues, but until Monday, when the young people will be received by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who will detail the principles enunciated by the president which satisfied the young interlocutors. First of all, a “rethinking of ParcourSup”, the highly contested platform that manages access to higher education.
But, as if that wasn’t enough, tension is also high in Orléans, in the center of the country, where the congress of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National is scheduled for the weekend, and according to a new poll, Marine Le Pen is increasingly alone in the lead in the first round of the presidential election and credited with 70% of the preferences in the run-off if Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical left of La France Insoumise, challenges her. Between 20,000 and 30,000 RN protesters will arrive in Orléans, led by several left and trade union leaders. The route of the march has been changed, 3,000 police will be deployed in the city. Several football matches have also been postponed, including the highly anticipated Paris Saint-Germain-Lyon, a decision that has infuriated Parisian fans.