France faces a fourth consecutive Saturday of protests, with students and workers planning to rally again in Paris and other cities, two days after a general strike that brought more than half a million people into the streets.
The students are protesting the disrepair of their schools and an unpopular university admissions process; workers are demanding higher wages and improved public services. The crowds have remained large since the protests evolved last month from a student-focused movement to a national one, suggesting the depth and breadth of grievances in the country.
On Thursday, the marches were mainly peaceful, though protesters clashed with the police in Lyon, where a car was set afire. France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, vowed to put 70,000 police officers on the streets on Saturday, matching the deployment for the past three major protests.
The government has labored to avoid a repeat of Oct. 17, when protests degenerated into arson, looting and other violence. Mr. Nuñez said fewer groups had applied for permission to hold rallies than on Thursday, but there was still the potential for spontaneous protests and the clashes that often follow.
While there have been no fatalities caused by the violence — one person died of cardiac arrest during the Oct. 17 rally — the strain on France’s police and security services appeared to be spilling into other realms.
The foreign ministry announced on Thursday that it would move a high-level diplomatic meeting to Paris from Marseille next week, citing “logistical and operational” reasons. The meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 7 advanced industrial nations was to have been held on Nov. 9 and 10 in the Pharo Palace, a 19th-century building, less than a mile from streets looted on Oct. 17, that overlooks Marseille’s harbor.
But the government opted to move the meeting at the last minute because, officials said, it fell just before the Paris Peace Forum, a conference that gathers world leaders to discuss war, peace and conflict resolution.
Marseille and Paris have both been hit by violence, which tends to erupt as the police disperse protesters at the end of marches. The authorities have also been dealing with a number of fake bomb threats against commercial flights in Europe, several of which were crossing French territory.
“It was a combination of logistical and operational considerations that led us to decide, as the deadline approached, to relocate the event to Paris,” Pascal Confavreux, a spokesman for the ministry, said on Thursday.
Mr. Confavreux did not address the protests or bomb threats specifically. But he said there were “operational issues for the teams, involving protocols and logistics, with two extremely important events taking place back-to-back. And that’s why it was important that we not overburden the teams.”
Giulia Imbert contributed reporting.
The post Another Day of Protests Is Planned in France’s Autumn of Discontent appeared first on New York Times.
