LIVE - Act IV of the yellow vests, demonstration of unions and high school students... A new day of mobilization under high tension

Saturday's new mobilization aims to maintain pressure two days before a social conference with unions and employers convened Monday morning in Matignon, and meetings with high school and student organizations in the afternoon.

In a letter Friday to the social partners, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, faced with a very hot social autumn, ensures that he “hears(re) the expectations expressed on salaries and purchasing power” and the “concerns” of employers. This conference “will make it possible to present concrete responses to the expectations of the French,” he says.

Like the day of mobilization on Thursday which went “generally well” according to the Ministry of the Interior, the authorities want at all costs to avoid a repeat of the scenes of riots and looting of October 17. The massive security system in force since then is therefore “renewed” on Friday, with 70,000 police and gendarmes mobilized throughout the country, announced Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

“The risk is exactly the same as for previous Saturdays,” he underlined, calling on the prefects “not to let down their guard in the face of more fragmented or even sporadic phenomena whose level of violence will not decrease in intensity”. “Obviously, city centers tomorrow (Saturday, Editor’s note) will be systematically protected. The prefects have issued orders prohibiting demonstrations in city centers so that there cannot be spontaneous gatherings,” he added.

New demonstrations are planned for Saturday under high security for the fourth consecutive weekend, with Paris as the epicenter where yellow vests intend to approach places of power, two days after a large-scale national mobilization at the call of the unions.

The youth inter-union (Student Union, Fage, Unef and USL) and regional unions (CGT, FO, FSU, Solidaires, CFDT) are calling for demonstrations on Saturday “against the high cost of living and for young people” in an authorized procession, on the same route as Thursday, linking the Places de la République to that of the Nation.

The coordination of the yellow vests has decided to go it alone, clearly marking its distance from the unions. She calls for a separate gathering, banned by the authorities, at Place de la Concorde. “We will go to Concorde at 2 p.m. and we will stay there until 7 p.m.,” Benjamin Ball, a member of their coordination, told the press on Friday outside the Paris police headquarters which banned the action. “We call for massive disobedience,” he warned.