PARIS.- President Emmanuel Macron meets high school student representatives on Friday, October 30, for the first time since the student protest wave began in mid-September, hours before France braces for a new day of demonstrations on Halloween Saturday. The meeting comes as Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez warns of a "very high risk of public disorder" on October 31 and deploys 70,000 police officers and gendarmes across the country, matching the exceptional mobilisation of last week.
The students have been marching for weeks against teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms — sometimes with more than 40 pupils — and dilapidated school buildings. Their demands are better-funded schools, more teachers and a greater say in decisions affecting their future. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu met student groups earlier in the week and offered a package including a transparency reform of the higher education admissions platform Parcoursup, 15,000 additional higher education placements, low-interest loans to regional authorities to renovate school infrastructure, and grants indexed to inflation. The university students' association Union Étudiante dismissed the offer as "crumbs", and the Fédération Lycéenne des Quartiers, representing high school students from working-class neighbourhoods where the wave began, said it was not invited to meet Lecornu.
Routes rejected in Paris and a pot-and-pan protest on Friday night
In Paris, the police prefecture rejected both routes submitted for Saturday: the CGT union's route and the Yellow Vests' route, both starting at Place de la Bastille but heading in opposite directions. The Yellow Vests have called their Halloween mobilisation "Act III", with sit-ins planned for 2 p.m. on Saturday outside the National Assembly and outside town halls across the country. Before that, organisers have called a pot-and-pan protest for Friday, October 30, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. outside the National Assembly and at 7 p.m. across France, outside town halls, at windows and in the streets.
Nuñez said demonstrations will be permitted, but "not in city centres, where there is a risk of public disorder", and warned that gatherings called for Saturday evening in public squares, under the pretext of Halloween, will be banned. "From early evening until late at night, the risk of urban violence is very high," he said, adding that police would respond "very firmly, without allowing any deviations". Security measures introduced last week, including armoured vehicles and water cannon, will be reinforced, and the minister warned demonstrators against using Halloween as "a legitimate reason to hide one's face" to cause disturbances.
From 410,000 protesters to a suspended curfew
Last Saturday, October 24, protests drew about 410,000 people nationwide, including 110,000 in Paris, according to the Interior Ministry, while unions put the figure at roughly double that. The Paris police prefecture recorded 142 arrests in the capital that day, far fewer than the 855 on October 17, when the ministry said more than 2,700 people were arrested nationwide. A curfew requiring unaccompanied minors to stay indoors from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in several parts of Paris was suspended by the administrative court on Wednesday, October 28, for lack of specific evidence to justify it.
Macron has described the violence as "political and seditious acts by ultra-left groups whose aim is to bring down the Republic", saying: "Those who looted will have to pay for the damage, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable." For the organisers, Saturday is a springboard to Thursday, November 5, when the inter-union coalition of CFDT, CGT, FO, Unsa and FSU has called an interprofessional strike over wages, pensions and public services.
Sources: Al Jazeera, October 29-30, 2026; Sortiraparis, October 2026; BFM TV via OpIndia, October 29, 2026.