France plans Sentinelle military deployment for Saturday protests

France will deploy forces from its Sentinelle military operation during protests planned for Saturday, 24 October, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told the National Assembly on Tuesday. The troops will mainly take static security duties, freeing police and gendarmes to maintain order after violent unrest the previous weekend.

Nuñez said Sentinelle personnel would substitute for internal security forces in those duties. He said the response to any further unrest would be firm, according to The Guardian. The planned military role is distinct from the police and gendarmes’ public-order work during the demonstrations.

Police plans for the 24 October demonstrations

Lecornu also said new curfews would be imposed where the situation required them, according to CNBC. He said curfews introduced in several cities had helped keep the previous night calm. Those restrictions were part of the government’s response to the earlier unrest, covered in our report on the local curfews.

Damage from the previous weekend’s unrest

The unrest damaged shared transport services. Lime said some of its bicycles and scooters in Paris were destroyed or damaged, amounting to about 6% of its fleet in the city. The company said it had worked with police before the demonstrations to remove vehicles from designated protest routes and restrict parking and riding in higher-risk areas. Smovengo, which operates Paris’s Vélib’ Métropole bike-share service, said about 300 bikes in its fleet of roughly 20,000 were damaged or stolen.

Jess Middleton, a senior Europe analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC by email that the scale of the damage suggested the riots could ultimately cost more than the unrest following Nahel Merzouk’s death in 2023, which generated around €1 billion in insured losses. Her comparison was an assessment of potential costs for the latest unrest.