France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said that 70,000 security personnel will once again be deployed across the country on Saturday in response to mass protests.
The police’s tactics will remain unchanged: they will carry out numerous pre-emptive checks, including on roads and at railway stations, BFM TV reports.
The minister noted that the situation is somewhat different this time, as fewer applications have been submitted by major trade unions. He said the authorities have recorded only a handful of officially declared actions, while most events are simply calls to gather without clear organisers, which carries greater risks.
Meanwhile, the coordinating council of the “Yellow Vests” movement has confirmed that tomorrow they plan to gather at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. They are not abandoning the idea despite a ban by the police prefecture, and they do not want to join the trade unions’ authorised march.
Yellow Vests lawyer David Libeskind explained that Place de la Concorde was chosen for its symbolic significance and its proximity to the National Assembly, as the protesters’ demands are political in nature.
- French trade unions said that around 1.6 million people took part in the mass protests that swept the country on 5 November.
- France’s Interior Ministry gave a more modest estimate: 600,000 demonstrators. However, the ministry acknowledged that this count is not final.