320,000 people march in France's third straight protest Saturday, and a hard core of rioters attacks Paris police with a Molotov cocktail at Porte de Charenton

France marched for the third Saturday in a row, and fewer people came. The Interior Ministry counted 320,000 protesters nationwide, 70,000 of them in Paris, down from 410,000 last Saturday and 550,000 on October 17. The youth inter-union, which speaks for the high school and university students who started the movement, put the day at 500,000 nationwide and 200,000 in Paris. The government deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes and closed more than 40 Paris metro stations. Overnight the Council of State upheld the prefecture's imposed Paris route, from Porte de Bagnolet to Porte de Charenton, and rejected the Bastille to Nation route the unions wanted. The march set off at 2 p.m., and the ministry described the midday hours as calm across the country, with 27 arrests by 2 p.m. against 217 at the same point a week earlier.

Paris held until the end of the route. The march walked in bright sunshine, with young people in the front rows wearing Halloween masks. At Porte de Charenton, the police prefecture said, a hard core of several hundred rioters attacked officers with projectiles, among them a Molotov cocktail, and masked people tore up paving stones to throw at police, who fired tear gas. ANSA reported rioters throwing fireworks at officers and damaging bus shelters and benches while police charged groups of young men dressed in black. Television cameras at Porte de Charenton filmed riot police moving through tear gas on the street where the march ended. Police also stopped an unannounced march of about 200 people on the Rue de la Roquette, near the Bastille.

The same pattern ran at the tail of marches across the country. The Interior Ministry said radical elements at the end of the marches in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes, Lille, Nantes, Marseille and Lyon tried to enter city centres to cause damage and loot, and police intervened and stopped them. In Rennes, police said several hundred violent people attacked officers after the march ended, throwing projectiles and setting fires. In Marseille the demonstration had not been announced to the authorities, and police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse the crowds. Police fired tear gas at the end of the Lyon march as well.

By 6 p.m. the ministry put detentions at 296 nationwide, far below the first two Saturdays. Police arrested 1,435 people on October 24, and over the weekend of October 17 and 18 they took more than 2,500 people into custody, most of them minors, on the weekend Interior Minister Laurent Nunez later admitted his forces lost control of the streets. The Chamber of Commerce puts retailer losses from the unrest above 1 billion euros. Paris bars demonstrations in the Republique and Chatelet les Halles districts from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., and unaccompanied minors are under a 9 p.m. curfew around the Champs Elysees.

Young people marched outside France on the same day. In Germany, students marched in more than 30 cities over schools, housing and living costs, and in Cologne police cancelled a march after masked people set off fireworks and officers used water cannon. In Barcelona last Saturday, police arrested about 130 people after looting at the end of a march there. The French movement began with students angry at crowded classes and decaying school buildings, and trade unions and Yellow Vest activists have since joined the marches over living costs and the state of public services.

On Friday, Fitch Ratings kept France's rating at A+ and cut the outlook to negative. Fitch expects French government debt to reach about 124 percent of output by 2028 and said parliament is too fractured to agree on a plan to stop the climb. President Emmanuel Macron's government is trying to pass its 2027 budget through that parliament in the same weeks it puts 70,000 officers on the street every Saturday. The unions have called further action for November 5. Halloween night still has hours to run in Paris, and the ban on demonstrations in the two central districts runs until 6 a.m.