The third Saturday of the "vie chère" (cost-of-living) movement fell on 31 October. The final figures, published on 1 and 2 November, show a movement losing numbers in France while its ideas spread to other countries. The marches are getting smaller and the police count fewer injured officers, but the unions are now staking everything on a weapon older than any march: the strike.
Reading the numbers
According to the authorities, 320,000 people marched in France, 779 were arrested and 116 members of the security forces were injured. The youth-and-union alliance claimed nearly 500,000, including 200,000 in Paris, while the ministry counted some 70,000 in the capital. The ministry's count has now fallen from 550,000 to 410,000 to 320,000 over three Saturdays.
The trend in the violence is even clearer. Authorities reported 515 fires and 36 shops damaged, three of them looted (against 69, including 24 looted, on 24 October). Injured officers fell to 116, against 267 on 24 October and 1,144 the week before. Laurent Nuñez still spoke of an "inouïe" (unprecedented) violence from groups of rioters, but he admitted that "the marches went well".
Part of the explanation is geography. Paris marches were rerouted to the capital's edge to protect stores, government buildings and touristed areas in the city center. Shops are harder to loot when a march runs along the Boulevards des Maréchaux, the ring of boulevards on the city's outer edge. The protesters' list of grievances also got longer. On top of the students' demands for more school funding and against the cost of living came anger at rising racism, after an attack that left one dead and seven injured on 23 October in the Paris region. That was the Trappes shooting.
A French spark, a European fire
Since the 1968 student revolt, France has had a reputation for exporting protest, and this autumn it has done so again. On 31 October, in Germany, a youth initiative called "Gen Z regelt" — roughly "Gen Z's got this" — rallied in more than 30 cities "for education, health, climate protection and an affordable life," and against any return of military conscription. Conscription matters here. Germany suspended compulsory military service in 2011, and the debate over bringing it back in response to Russia has made it a sore point for a generation that would be first in line. One Berlin student summed up the school funding problem: "At my school, the ceiling is collapsing because of water damage".
German officials then reached for a familiar French explanation. Police used water cannons and rioters smashed shop windows as officials warned that youth-led "Gen Z has got this!" rallies were hijacked by extremist factions in Frankfurt, Cologne and beyond. In Portugal the issue is housing. Thousands of protesters, including families with small children, converged in downtown Lisbon to peacefully protest Portugal's housing crisis, holding up placards reading "Houses or Fire". The common thread is economic, not cultural: EU youth unemployment stood at 15.4% in August, while nearly a quarter of people aged 15–29 faced poverty or social exclusion in 2025.
Why 5 November is different
A Saturday march costs a worker nothing except a day off. A weekday strike costs a day's pay, and it hits the economy rather than the shop windows. In Lyon, after nearly 19,000 people according to the Rhône prefecture and 20,000 according to the unions marched on 31 October, the unions called a new day of interprofessional strike and demonstration on Thursday, 5 November.
The more radical unions want more than one day. Solidaires' slogan is "On 5 November, everyone on strike, and on the 6th we renew!" This is the French tradition of the grève reconductible, a strike that general assemblies vote to renew every morning. It was the tactic that paralysed the railways in 1995 and again in the winter of 2019. SUD-Rail has already announced a total strike on the railways. Whether the strike gets renewed on 6 November, and not the size of the crowds, will show whether the movement still has momentum.
The third Saturday of the "vie chère" (cost-of-living) movement fell on 31 October. The final figures, published on 1 and 2 November, show a movement losing numbers in France while its ideas spread to other countries. The marches are getting smaller and the police count fewer injured officers, but the unions are now staking everything on a weapon older than any march: the strike.
Reading the numbers
According to the authorities, 320,000 people marched in France, 779 were arrested and 116 members of the security forces were injured. The youth-and-union alliance claimed nearly 500,000, including 200,000 in Paris, while the ministry counted some 70,000 in the capital. The ministry's count has now fallen from 550,000 to 410,000 to 320,000 over three Saturdays.
The trend in the violence is even clearer. Authorities reported 515 fires and 36 shops damaged, three of them looted (against 69, including 24 looted, on 24 October). Injured officers fell to 116, against 267 on 24 October and 1,144 the week before. Laurent Nuñez still spoke of an "inouïe" (unprecedented) violence from groups of rioters, but he admitted that "the marches went well".
Part of the explanation is geography. Paris marches were rerouted to the capital's edge to protect stores, government buildings and touristed areas in the city center. Shops are harder to loot when a march runs along the Boulevards des Maréchaux, the ring of boulevards on the city's outer edge. The protesters' list of grievances also got longer. On top of the students' demands for more school funding and against the cost of living came anger at rising racism, after an attack that left one dead and seven injured on 23 October in the Paris region. That was the Trappes shooting.
A French spark, a European fire
Since the 1968 student revolt, France has had a reputation for exporting protest, and this autumn it has done so again. On 31 October, in Germany, a youth initiative called "Gen Z regelt" — roughly "Gen Z's got this" — rallied in more than 30 cities "for education, health, climate protection and an affordable life," and against any return of military conscription. Conscription matters here. Germany suspended compulsory military service in 2011, and the debate over bringing it back in response to Russia has made it a sore point for a generation that would be first in line. One Berlin student summed up the school funding problem: "At my school, the ceiling is collapsing because of water damage".
German officials then reached for a familiar French explanation. Police used water cannons and rioters smashed shop windows as officials warned that youth-led "Gen Z has got this!" rallies were hijacked by extremist factions in Frankfurt, Cologne and beyond. In Portugal the issue is housing. Thousands of protesters, including families with small children, converged in downtown Lisbon to peacefully protest Portugal's housing crisis, holding up placards reading "Houses or Fire". The common thread is economic, not cultural: EU youth unemployment stood at 15.4% in August, while nearly a quarter of people aged 15–29 faced poverty or social exclusion in 2025.
Why 5 November is different
A Saturday march costs a worker nothing except a day off. A weekday strike costs a day's pay, and it hits the economy rather than the shop windows. In Lyon, after nearly 19,000 people according to the Rhône prefecture and 20,000 according to the unions marched on 31 October, the unions called a new day of interprofessional strike and demonstration on Thursday, 5 November.
The more radical unions want more than one day. Solidaires' slogan is "On 5 November, everyone on strike, and on the 6th we renew!" This is the French tradition of the grève reconductible, a strike that general assemblies vote to renew every morning. It was the tactic that paralysed the railways in 1995 and again in the winter of 2019. SUD-Rail has already announced a total strike on the railways. Whether the strike gets renewed on 6 November, and not the size of the crowds, will show whether the movement still has momentum.
Sources