Cost of living, act III, follow-up: fewer protesters, the same clashes, running out of steam is not an answer

For the third Saturday in a row, the movement against the rising cost of living once again brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of France. But the numbers are falling, and the end of the Paris march was again marked by clashes. Two readings are already competing: that of a movement running out of steam, and that of an anger that still finds no answer.

The facts: lower turnout, clashes at the end of the route

According to the Interior Ministry, quoted by AFP and HuffPost, 320,000 people demonstrated in France on Saturday 31 October, including 70,000 in Paris. The previous Saturday, the authorities had counted 410,000, including 110,000 in the capital. Youth organisations (Union étudiante, Fage, Unef, USL) claim nearly half a million participants, including 200,000 in Paris, compared with around 800,000 the week before according to their own counts.

In Paris, the march followed the route imposed by the police prefecture and upheld overnight by the Conseil d'État, along the boulevards des Maréchaux, from Porte de Bagnolet to Porte de Charenton. The procession was calm for most of the afternoon. On arrival, however, clashes broke out. According to AFP journalists on the scene, dozens of masked people dressed in black prised up paving stones to throw at the police, who responded with tear gas and charges. The police prefecture denounced:

a "hard core of several hundred rioters" — Paris police prefecture

It also reported projectiles being thrown, including a Molotov cocktail. No national arrest figures had been released by early evening. The security operation involved 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, according to the Interior Ministry, which noted this week that 1,193 members of the security forces have been injured since the protests began.

The positions at stake

For the government and part of the right, the day vindicates the strategy of firmness. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had promised a "firm and republican" response to rioters, according to Entrevue. In the Senate, Olivier Paccaud, LR senator for the Oise, defended routes kept away from shopping districts, arguing, as reported by Public Sénat, that the route does not change the protesters' message and that the security forces know which routes are safest. The argument deserves a hearing: after the looting of 17 October, protecting shopkeepers and officers is not an authoritarian whim, it is a duty of the State.

The unions and part of the left, by contrast, see it as a way of wearing the movement down. Rémi Cardon, Socialist senator for the Somme, spoke, again according to Public Sénat, of an "organised discouragement from coming to protest". Youth organisations are now calling for blockades of secondary schools and universities on Tuesday 3 and Thursday 5 November, the date on which a cross-sector strike has also been announced.

On substance, the disagreement is about wages. According to Public Sénat, the government is reportedly considering raising the minimum wage (SMIC) by around 0.5% from December, roughly 22 euros a month, while the unions are demanding 100 to 150 euros. Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou insists that nothing has been decided yet.

Analysis: running out of steam is not calming down

It would be tempting for the executive to read the drop in turnout as a sign that the crisis is closing. That would be a mistake. A movement that loses people from one Saturday to the next, while its demands remain unanswered, does not always die out: it can also fragment. Peaceful protesters, weary or discouraged, go home; those who remain are sometimes the most determined, and not always the most peaceful. The images from Porte de Charenton illustrate this risk.

The Gaullist tradition has always held two requirements together: the authority of the State and concern for national cohesion. Public order is the condition of social democracy, not a substitute for it. Condemning violence without reservation, as one must, does not exempt the government from answering the question asked by hundreds of thousands of peaceful French people: how can one live decently from one's work when the prices of essential goods weigh so heavily?

Yet the gap between the 22 euros under discussion and the 100 to 150 euros demanded will not be closed by police prefecture press releases. It calls for negotiation. In comparable moments of tension, France has managed to bring the State, employers and unions around the same table to find a way out of a crisis from the top. That is the method missing today.

Conclusion: a wage conference before 5 November

The government has a few days before the 5 November strike. It could use them to convene a national wage conference with a clear mandate: a boost to the SMIC above the legal minimum, the opening of sector-level negotiations on pay scales that have fallen below the minimum wage, and making social contribution exemptions conditional on actual wage increases. It would be a gesture of social justice as much as an act of republican responsibility.

The real question, then, is not whether the movement is running out of steam, but whether the State will manage to speak to those who have gone home before they stop believing anyone is listening.

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.