Paris union protest route change November 5 2026, Digi Mart USA News (Paris, France): The Paris police prefecture has imposed a new route on Thursday’s union demonstration, limiting it to the stretch between Place de la République and Place de la Nation, citing risks to public order. The march is part of a national strike call issued by the country’s main unions to defend wages and employment.
According to a prefecture order published Wednesday, the demonstration “may take place” between Place de la République and Place de la Nation. The union federation and student and high school organizations had originally proposed a route from Place de la Bastille to Place de la Concorde, near the National Assembly.
Paris Police Prefect Patrice Faure wrote that the demonstration takes place in an extremely tense social context, marked in particular by urban riots in the capital on October 17. He also cited the infiltration of “violent and determined elements” and risks to public order in what he described as a very high national and international threat environment.
The prefecture said the Bastille-to-Concorde route had been declared but that, after consultation with the organizers and taking court decisions into account, it imposed a partial ban with a route from Place de la République to Place de la Nation via Boulevard Voltaire. It urged participants to join the single validated and secured route.
For the October 17 mobilization alone, 855 people were arrested in Paris, and more than 200 shops were vandalized or looted in the capital on the sidelines of the demonstration.
Vincent Gautheron, general secretary of the CGT Île-de-France regional union, told AFP he was surprised that the prefecture cited security concerns to reject the Bastille-Concorde route and impose an alternative it had refused two weeks earlier for security reasons.
In a statement, the union coalition said it was contesting the partial ban order and the prefecture’s route before the Paris administrative court and was again requesting the originally filed route. Late in the evening, the Paris administrative court rejected the unions’ appeal for the Bastille-Concorde route.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez asked prefects and security officials to deploy “robust” arrangements for the day, which he described as “sensitive,” according to a telegram reviewed by AFP on Tuesday. He recommended “robust, agile and responsive” operational measures with reinforced police and gendarmerie personnel.
