Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of the CSU said on Wednesday that preparations would be made in coordination with the security authorities. Speaking to ZDF, he warned that foreign members of extremist scenes had in the past come to Germany to take part in protests.
Left-wing groups in Germany, above all Gen Z regelt das, are calling for demonstrations on the French model on 31 October, including in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Bremen, Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. The organisers say they object to broken schools, conscription, price rises, social cuts, surveillance, wars and a shift to the right. The group officially rejects violence.
Its Stuttgart branch shared an Instagram video in which violent protest is played down, and the group's nationwide Instagram page spread the clip further. An anonymous narrator said that the eight-hour day, the weekend, health insurance, women's rights, queer rights and other human rights now taken for granted were won through violence because there was no other way. The video also shows footage of the unrest in France.
In France, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said security authorities had arrested 135 rioters nationwide by 1 p.m. on Saturday during further violence at left-wing and far-left protests. He said police and gendarmerie found lead bullets, fireworks and other objects intended to serve as weapons during identity checks, and that the checks showed the determination of the ultra-left and radical far-left scene to escalate demonstrations in public space.
Police said 110,000 people in Paris alone followed a call by left-wing unions, the populist Yellow Vests movement and several student organisations. The protests, organised for weeks, are described by the organisers as directed against conditions in French schools and rising living costs. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France insoumise, was present and said that if Emmanuel Macron and Sébastien Lecornu do not give way, only a way out remains open to them.
In other large French cities, the report says far-left activists attacked security forces and buildings. In Lyon, where the protests were banned, police used tear gas. In Nantes, police arrested six people after they looted a shop, the Pays de la Loire regional administration said. In Orléans, where the Rassemblement National had held its party congress, the situation remained peaceful.
Since the end of September, far-left groups in France have organised protests that have been largely violent and have led to nearly 10,000 arrests. The original trigger was nationwide occupations of upper secondary schools. Demonstrations against rising living costs followed. Within a few days, the report says, far-left activists and migrants joined the demonstrators, damaged property and attacked police officers and uninvolved passers-by. In Limoges, the historic town hall burned during the unrest.