France deploys 70,000 police as Yellow Vests vow mass disobedience

France is bracing for another round of street protests on Saturday, with unions and student groups marching in central Paris while the Yellow Vests movement pushes ahead with a banned rally of its own near the heart of power. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez says 70,000 police officers and security forces will be out across the country. His message to troublemakers was blunt: if rioters or looters show up, authorities will be waiting.

The two camps are deliberately not marching together. Student groups and trade unions called an authorised route through central Paris against the high cost of living and in support of young people. The Yellow Vests refused to join, instead demanding a gathering at Place de la Concorde, steps from the lower house of parliament and the presidential palace. Authorities banned it; the movement says it's coming anyway.

The backdrop is weeks of youth-led unrest and nationwide strikes that pulled hundreds of thousands of workers into the streets over soaring living costs. Thursday's turnout was massive but mostly orderly, though skirmishes with police flared in several cities and 642 people were arrested. The interior ministry said those protests had generally gone well. Police tactics are under a different kind of scrutiny, with dozens of internal investigations opened into allegations of brutality against demonstrators.

This is all happening less than six months before voters pick a new head of state to replace centrist President Emmanuel Macron, and the far right is leading the opinion polls. The Yellow Vests know this terrain well. Eight years ago they took to the streets against Macron's government over planned fuel-tax hikes, and the movement has never fully gone away. Benjamin Ball, a member of its coordinating committee, framed Saturday's plan in two words: mass disobedience.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu is trying to find an off-ramp, promising to discuss wages and purchasing power with union and employer representatives on Monday. An inter-union coalition said Friday that the only thing that will end the protests is a real answer to the demands workers, civil servants, young people and pensioners have been putting forward for weeks.

Those demands are specific: a minimum wage increase, which hasn't received a discretionary boost since 2012, across-the-board raises, tax reforms and better learning conditions for young people. The problem is money. With the European Union's second-largest economy under pressure to rein in its debt, the government has limited room to hand out the concessions that might quiet the streets.