PARIS.- France's third consecutive Saturday of protests against the rising cost of living and deteriorating public services ended in clashes in Paris and several other cities on October 31, after a mostly peaceful day of marches that drew fewer people than the two previous Saturdays, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said.
The Interior Ministry counted 320,000 demonstrators across France, including 70,000 in Paris. The youth union coalition put the national figure near 500,000, including about 200,000 in the capital. Both counts were below the previous Saturday — 410,000 according to the authorities, 800,000 according to the organizers — and well below the 550,000 to 800,000 estimated for October 17, the day that degenerated into looting and attacks on shops and public buildings.
The day had started with a legal battle over the Paris route. The unions and the yellow vests had called a march from Bastille to Nation, in the heart of the capital. The Paris police prefecture refused that route and proposed an alternative from Porte de Charenton to Porte de Bagnolet, on the eastern edge of the city, far from the commercial center. An administrative court annulled the prefecture's order on Friday, but the Council of State, France's highest administrative court, ruled on Saturday morning in favor of the government, which had appealed citing a serious risk to public order. The march therefore took the authorized eastern route, under a bright sun, with some demonstrators in Halloween costumes such as Spider-Man, Mario and Frankenstein.
At the end of the Paris march, clashes broke out. Several hundred rioters — between 200 and 300, according to police — threw paving stones and at least one incendiary device at officers, and some carried Molotov cocktails and cans of gasoline. Police answered with tear gas. Similar confrontations were reported at the end of the marches in Lyon, Rennes, Marseille and Toulouse. In Marseille, tensions flared at La Plaine, the march's endpoint, where preparations were already underway for a public Halloween celebration.
Nuñez said 422 people had been arrested by the end of the day, a figure he expected to rise, and described the rioters' excesses as unprecedented even though the day was not a repeat of October 17. The government had deployed an exceptional force of 70,000 police and gendarmes nationwide, with mobile units, armored vehicles, drones and helicopters, fearing that social media calls for "revolution" and "insurrection" would mix with Halloween night gatherings into unauthorized marches and looting.
The prefecture also reimposed a curfew around Place de la République and the Châtelet-Les Halles shopping hub for the nights of Saturday to Sunday and Sunday to Monday, from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., the area where numerous shops were looted on the weekend of October 17 and 18. Dozens of metro stations were closed in Paris and many shops boarded up their windows.
The movement, which brings together yellow vests, unions and high school and university students, began against the cost of living, inequality and deteriorating teaching conditions, and has since added a denunciation of racism after an attack on October 23 in the Paris region left one person dead and seven injured. Students, who sparked the mobilization, already announced that they consider the government's education package of October 26 insufficient and will resume blockades of high schools and universities on Tuesday and Thursday, ahead of a general strike called for November 5.
Fuentes: EFE vía swissinfo.ch, 31 de octubre de 2026; AFP vía El Universo, 31 de octubre de 2026; Reuters vía La Nación, 31 de octubre de 2026.