France, Macron chooses unions as the only street interlocutor

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that on Saturday, 24 October, in Paris and other cities, only demonstrations called by trade unions will be authorised, following the clashes and looting recorded over the previous weekend (Sky TG24; Adnkronos).

The measure introduces a clear distinction between trade union organisations, which will be able to march along routes agreed with the prefectures, and non-union groups, whose marches will be banned “where possible”, according to what was reported by the two agencies. The prefects will manage alternative routes to keep the marches away from historic centres, commercial activities and public buildings.

The second politically significant element is the summoning to the Élysée of all French intelligence services. Macron called them to account after, according to the sources cited, they had failed to foresee the escalation of last Saturday’s mobilisation and the disorders that followed in French cities. This amounts to an implicit admission of a flaw in the public order forecasting system, which precedes the decision to restrict the scope of authorised demonstrations.

On the operational level, Deputy Interior Minister Jean-Didier Berger stated that elite police and gendarmerie units — Raid, Gign and Bri — will also be deployed on Saturday, units normally assigned to high-risk operations rather than crowd control. The choice signals how much the executive regards Saturday as a passage of non-ordinary tension.

The selection between union and non-union organisers raises a substantive question that the consulted texts do not address: what criteria in practice distinguish an authorised union group from an excluded collective, and who decides the classification case by case. On the concrete management of this dividing line, at present, no additional official statements have been issued by the Élysée or the French Interior Ministry.