French police arrested 1,314 people on Saturday, October 24, during protests against the high cost of living, and 53 officers were injured, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday. This is far fewer than in the first wave of unrest a week earlier.
According to a statement from the French Ministry of the Interior, reported by Reuters, AFP and the Slovak daily SME among others, police intervened 75 times on Saturday. 24 shops were looted. The ministry said several investigations had been opened without giving details, and described the rest of the night as calm. The Sunday statement did not say how many demonstrators were injured.
Far fewer than a week earlier
As BFMTV, cited by the agencies, reports, 2,628 people were arrested and 1,144 officers were injured on the first day of mobilisation on October 17. On that day 1,522 shops were looted and firefighters intervened 2,025 times, compared with 75 times this time. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez assessed, according to these reports, that the balance was positive, and that reinforced forces (reportedly 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, 10,000 more than a week earlier) helped prevent mass looting. Nuñez also argued that high-risk groups are breaking away from demonstrations, and blamed far-left activists and gangs.
We wrote about the previous wave of unrest and the dispute over who is to blame in our article on the Interior Ministry’s tally after the Saturday unrest a week earlier.
Injured demonstrators
Late on Saturday evening, Nuñez reported two seriously injured protesters: in Toulouse and Clermont-Ferrand. The Toulouse prefecture told AFP that a 20-year-old man had suffered a serious hand injury; according to a paramedic, he lost several fingers of his right hand. A hand injury was also recorded in Clermont-Ferrand. The local daily “La Nouvelle République” described a 19-year-old with an injury to his left eye in Poitiers, who was hurt – as the newspaper’s photographer told AFP – during a police charge using stun grenades and tear gas. Investigations are looking into the circumstances of these incidents.
Scale of the demonstrations and the rest of Europe
According to reports based on Interior Ministry data, about 410,000 people took part in the demonstrations, while trade unions speak of nearly twice that number (BFMTV gives approximately 800,000). The largest march took place in the south-eastern areas of Paris. In Marseille, 71 people were arrested, but Mayor Benoît Payan described the local demonstration as peaceful, despite minor incidents at its end.
Solidarity protests with French young people also took place in Italy. According to AFP and Reuters, cited by Interia, more than 10,000 people demonstrated in Milan, and clashes with police broke out in Rome near the Colosseum.
What it means
For readers in Poland, this is primarily news about the situation in one of the EU’s main partners. People planning to travel to France should expect disruption and blockades in the centres of large cities on demonstration days. The French Interior Ministry has not yet announced further protest dates, and no reaction from President Emmanuel Macron to Saturday’s tally had been reported at the time of publication.
