France's protest movement is not fading — it is widening. A day after 410,000 people marched across the country in nationwide rallies, unions and protest groups called on Sunday for more demonstrations next Saturday and a nationwide strike on November 5, turning a student-led revolt into a broad social confrontation with President Emmanuel Macron.
The Interior Ministry said 410,000 people took part in Saturday's marches, as authorities deployed 70,000 police in a huge security operation that helped contain unrest and avert a repeat of the looting and vandalism that swept many cities on October 17.
But the calm on the streets did not calm the anger. Labour leaders said frustration over wages, living costs and public services was spreading far beyond the student movement that first mobilised last month — and they are now planning the next wave.
"An aggregation of anger"
"We see an aggregation of anger," Murielle Guilbert, co-leader of the left-wing Solidaires trade union federation, told BFM TV. She said grievances from students, workers, firefighters and other groups were converging. "We call on people to take to the streets next Saturday."
The SUD Education teaching union said it would join the October 31 demonstration, while the large CGT union said it would decide during the week. Labour leaders also urged a nationwide strike on November 5.
The Yellow Vests, the grassroots movement that emerged in 2018 as a revolt against fuel taxes, also called for mass rallies next Saturday, including sit-ins outside town halls and the National Assembly.
"There is anger in this country. It's growing in schools and universities, on roundabouts, in neighbourhoods, on farms and in workplaces," activist Azelma Sigaux told reporters.
Macron's scope to respond is minimal
The timing is brutal for Emmanuel Macron. In 2019, the president was able to find the resources to reduce fuel costs in response to the Yellow Vests. Seven years on, strained public finances leave him with little room to meet protesters' demands.
His mandate also expires next April, and his centrist party no longer holds the majority needed to pass major legislation. The government can neither buy off the protests nor legislate its way out of them — and the streets know it.
That weakness is exactly what the unions are pressing on. What began as a student mobilisation over living conditions has become a convergence of grievances: pay, pensions, schools, hospitals and the cost of living, carried by workers, teachers, firefighters and the returning Yellow Vests together.
Why it matters
France has seen this pattern before — a protest that starts in one corner of society and spreads until it becomes a national test of the president. The difference now is the calendar: with a strike set for November 5, another Saturday of marches on October 31, and a president in the final months of his mandate with no majority and no money to offer, the movement has time and momentum on its side.
The question is no longer whether the protests continue, but how far they spread — and whether Emmanuel Macron can find any answer at all before his presidency runs out.
Reporting based on Reuters.