France Mounts ‘Massive’ Troop-Backed Security Operation Ahead of Weekend Protests

France is preparing a large-scale security operation for protests planned this Saturday, with soldiers deployed to reinforce police and gendarmes amid fears of a repeat of last weekend’s violence.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the country will mount a huge operation, acknowledging the government’s failures in its response to the previous weekend’s unrest and promising that the deployment “will be massive.” Some forces from Operation Sentinelle, the military’s long-running domestic security mission, are expected to free up police and gendarmes for crowd-control duties. President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to prevent a repeat of the weekend’s riots, and Lecornu has raised the possibility of curfews where necessary.

Education funding at the centre

The demonstrations were called over the underfunding of education, but they have drawn in wider grievances about living costs and public services that have been building for months. What began as sectoral protests by teachers and students has increasingly become a focal point for general discontent with the government.

A familiar French dilemma

France has a long tradition of street protest, and governments are judged as much on how they police demonstrations as on the policies that provoke them. Deploying troops in support of police is not unusual in France, but the scale promised this weekend signals how seriously the government takes the risk of disorder — and how politically costly another night of rioting would be.

The operation will be a test for Lecornu’s government: too light a presence risks chaos, too heavy a hand risks inflaming the crowds it is meant to contain.

Source: Reuters via Just Security