Protesters clashed with police in France on Saturday as demonstrations over living costs and public services entered a fourth consecutive weekend and drew students, trade unions and members of the revived “Yellow Vest” movement onto the streets.

The country’s Interior Ministry counted 146,000 demonstrators nationwide, including 46,000 in Paris. A youth union alliance put attendance at 250,000 nationally and 75,000 in the capital. At least 360 people were arrested across the country, AFP reported, citing a ministry tally.

Police used tear gas against people throwing projectiles as the main Paris march ended at Place de la Nation, per AFP. Garbage cans were set alight as protesters and police clashed in several cities, according to Le Monde.

Police blocked a separate, banned Yellow Vest gathering at Place de la Concorde and arrested two movement leaders, Le Monde reported.

The Yellow Vests emerged in 2018 in opposition to fuel-tax increases, before broadening into a movement protesting high living costs and the policies of President Emmanuel Macron.

The turnout was lower than on the previous three weekends. It was also below union-led demonstrations on Nov. 5, when the Interior Ministry counted 575,000 people nationwide.

The protests began in late September with high-school students demanding better conditions, before university students and unions joined.

This weekend’s protests come after French lawmakers rejected the revenue section of the 2027 budget, as the government wrestles with addressing public anger while trying to rein in its finances.

The government’s original proposal now goes to the Senate, which is scheduled to begin debating it Nov. 20.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is due to meet labor and employer representatives Monday to discuss wages and purchasing power.

French lawmakers rejected the government’s cost-cutting budget on Wednesday evening, as the country’s finances fuel widespread protests and worry bond markets.

Politicians in the National Assembly — the lower house of France’s parliament — voted unanimously against adopting 2027 budget plans drafted by Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s government.

The government is trying to appease France’s creditors — traders in its bonds — by drastically reducing the country’s deficit and convincing lawmakers to approve sweeping spending cuts.

Lecornu said in September that he was targeting spending cuts worth 54 billion euros ($61.8 billion).

But no one party holds a majority in the National Assembly and lawmakers across the political spectrum sit in it, making agreements on fiscal policy difficult.

Since 2024’s snap election delivered a hung parliament, successive governments have used Article 49.3 of the constitution to force budgets through without a vote.

But threats of motions of no confidence have previously forced concessions. If a government is ousted, lawmakers must go back to the drawing board with the budget.

Another option is to pass the budget by ordinance, which has never been done in the French Fifth Republic, created in 1958. If a government is ousted after using this power, the budget it forces through remains in place.

Lecornu secured the 2026 budget via Article 49.3, after replacing ousted Prime Minister François Bayrou.

Concerns about the French budget deficit, which measured 5.1% of gross domestic product in 2025, have seen French government bonds — known as OATs — come under extreme pressure this year.

With borrowing costs rising, the country’s national debt — which amounted to 115.6% of GDP in 2025 — is also increasingly a source of concern.

Since late September, France has seen violent protests across the country, with demonstrations dissolving into riots and looting in late October. What began with student protests over education funding is thought to have caused more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in damages.

Nationwide strikes were due to take place on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to join demonstrations voicing discontent with the rising cost of living.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said 70,000 police and gendarmes — a military police force — will be deployed in efforts to quell any outbreaks of violence.

French media reported on Thursday that fires had been started at some demonstrations, with protesters spotted carrying placards that read “no to a France held…

France’s Senate has passed a bill that would hold rioters financially accountable for damages, as the country grapples with public unrest.

Under the so-called “Rioters Pay” bill, protesters could be ordered to pay up to 10,000 euros ($11,140) “for the compensation of damages resulting from crimes and offenses committed by force or violence.” Welfare payments could also be seized to cover costs.

France’s government is grappling with nationwide violent protests while trying to slash bloated state spending. The protests, which began as a student movement, have broadened into wider public unrest, with demonstrators’ demands ranging from greater investment in education to help with the cost of living.

The unrest hit boiling point earlier this month, when protests descended into rioting, looting and violent clashes with police. Further demonstrations are expected this weekend.

On Oct. 21, French Economy Minister Roland Lescure said in an interview that the violence and unrest had caused “tens or perhaps hundreds of millions” of euros worth of damage.

Senators approved the “Rioters Pay” bill on Wednesday, with 229 lawmakers voting for and 105 voting against.

The government first submitted the bill to the Senate on Sept. 16. It needs to pass through the National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, to become law.

French lawmakers are in the process of negotiating a fiscal budget for 2027, with Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu targeting 54 billion euros ($61.8 billion) in spending cuts.

The country is currently subject to the EU’s excessive deficit procedure, with the bloc wanting Paris to bring its national deficit closer to 3% of GDP by 2029, compared with 5.1% in 2025.

French governments have collapsed when spending disagreements came to a…

Mostly peaceful protests across France over a worsening cost-of-living crisis and growing inequality descended into violence for a second straight weekend.

France’s Interior Ministry said 410,000 people took part in protests in several major cities, including Paris.

After rioters set fire to the historic city hall in Limoges and looters smashed supermarkets and luxury boutiques in Lyon last weekend, French authorities greatly stepped up security ahead of Saturday’s protests.

In Paris on Saturday, riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse a group of around 500 hooded youths who hurled stones at officers, Reuters quoted a security official as saying.

In France’s second city, Marseille, youths dragged large metal sheets to block a street, set fire to rubbish bins, and hurled rocks and bottles at riot police. The confrontations continued after sunset, and police said looters raided two jewelry shops, according to a Reuters report.

Clashes also flared in Lyon, Bordeaux and Grenoble, while police fired volleys of tear gas at demonstrators in Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Nantes and Nice, according to the agency.

However, the violence was still less intense than a week ago, when looters and vandals went on the rampage in a number of French cities.

The demonstrations began last month as a group of high school students in suburban Paris lamented poor school conditions, including teacher shortages and unsatisfactory facilities. The demonstrations have since grown and evolved into nationwide protests.

France’s economic and political woes have sharply raised the cost of government borrowing. The yield on its 10-year bond rose above 5% for the first time since 2002 this week, settling around 5.03% on Friday.

Some investors fear the country’s debt problems could spread to the rest of the euro zone.

French President Emmanuel Macron has criticized “unacceptable” and “stupid” comments made by foreign leaders and others after the country saw mass protests and its worst rioting in years.

“There was foreign disinformation in the aftermath, which prompted comments that were as unacceptable as they were stupid from many people, including foreign leaders,” Macron told reporters on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Macron clarified he was talking about U.S. President Donald Trump “among others,” and said politicians were using the situation in France for their own ends.

Posting on his Truth social platform, Trump earlier this week blamed the unrest on “migrants, jihadists, and Communists” and told Europe to close its borders.

Trump and other Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, have referenced the unrest in France on the campaign trail ahead of the upcoming U.S. midterms. They have claimed that Democrat policies on immigration would raise similar tensions.

Officials in Iran — where rights groups say authorities killed hundreds of people during a crackdown on recent demonstrations — have also weighed in, with Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi calling on Macron to listen to the protesters’ demands.

Separate protests also took place in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Albania on Saturday and Sunday. Thousands of people marched in Greece on Wednesday for improved education services, in solidarity with French students whose protests were the initial trigger for mounting unrest in the country.

Tensions remain high in France. Student union UNEF and the anti-establishment “Gilets jaunes,” or “yellow vest” group, have both called for further rallies this coming weekend.

Macron — who has faced criticism this week for embarking on a tour of Gulf countries — has vowed that there will be no repeat of the recent violence. Several French cities were rocked by looting and arson at the weekend, alongside mass peaceful protests over the state of public services, the cost of living and discontent with political leadership.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said Wednesday that some military forces would be deployed to help maintain order.

Investors are increasingly skeptical that France will pass a program of fiscal consolidation to shrink its high deficit-to-gross domestic product ratio. Parliament is currently…

As protests intensify in France, Kalshi traders see a growing likelihood that far-right candidate Marine Le Pen will win that country’s presidential race in 2027.

Student-led protests first erupted in Paris over frustration with school conditions and teacher shortages in September but rippled into national outrage over the country’s living costs and public services, including in education and healthcare. Authorities said over 500,000 people demonstrated nationwide over the weekend.

Since the protests have started, Kalshi trading activity over who will be the next French president has jumped on Kalshi. Odds for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen have jumped to 53% from 39% in the last month. 

Just days after the protests began, speculators placed a 44.7% chance on Sept. 26 that David Lisnard, the current mayor of Cannes, would become the country’s next president. Those odds came in just a day after he held a major campaign rally for the presidential race.

Lisnard’s Kalshi odds of winning the 2027 presidential contest dropped to 11% by Tuesday afternoon. The contract asks “Next French presidential election winner?” and will be verified by French government next year.

Le Pen has repeatedly criticized the escalating civil unrest, cementing it as a key message in her campaign and arguing that leadership under Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government has contributed to the conditions behind the protests.

“You saw yesterday our cities, our streets, our country, battered, mistreated, ransacked,” Le Pen wrote in an Oct. 18 post on social media platform X, following some of the country’s worst unrest in years, with over 2,000 arrests and nearly 1,000 police officers and gendarmes injured, according to the country’s ministry.

“We are living through a profound crisis of trust, of authority that poses a threat to democracy. This observation must alert us: our country is caught in a vise, or even taken hostage, between violence and powerlessness,” Le Pen added. 

French stocks are also facing volatility, with the CAC 40 index down 2.8% in the last month and off almost 6% in the last six months. The country’s bond yields, which measure the government’s borrowing costs, have also been on the rise, with the 10-year government bond yield trading above 4.9%. 

“It will be difficult to see the budget deficit come down without painful measures,” Sharon Bell, senior European equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes…

Curfews contributed to a “calm” night across France, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said Tuesday, even as public discontent remained high following the weekend’s mass protests, looting and violent scenes.

Certain areas of several French cities were under curfew overnight, including Place de la République and Les Halles in Paris, and parts of central Lyon. Lille and Nice were among the cities to impose curfews for minors.

The unrest comes at a particularly fragile moment for France, where public anger over living costs and deteriorating services is colliding with political instability and a mounting fiscal crisis that threatens to turn into a sovereign debt crisis as government borrowing costs rise to the highest level in decades.

The country faces a divided parliament with no majority and presidential elections in April 2027.

In a statement on Tuesday, Lecornu said local officials would impose new curfews where required.

Meanwhile, criticism is mounting over President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to embark on a three-day tour of the Middle East as France suffers its most severe riots in many years.

Riots followed weeks of demonstrations amid public anger over the country’s education system, the cost of living and other issues.

While hundreds of thousands of people marched peacefully, pockets of violence erupted, shocking the country, as protesters smashed shopfronts and set Limoges Town Hall on fire.

Political commentator Christophe Barbier on radio station RTL said on Monday there was “no longer a pilot in the plane.” At the same time, newspaper La Dépêche du Midi wrote in a scathing editorial that Macron had “to see if the misery of a reviled president is less painful in the Persian Gulf sun” as France “sinks deeper into crisis.”

Macron said on Sunday he was looking to address high fuel prices and secure French energy supplies through the trip to Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar, while strengthening defense and security cooperation.

French assets came under pressure on Monday after the weekend scenes, with bonds, stocks and the euro all selling off, amid growing skepticism about the country’s ability to bring down its deficit to a sustainable level.

Fierce debate is underway over the 2027 budget, with the government targeting an overall decline in the deficit to 5% of GDP from 5.4%.

Anger over the cost of living and pressure on public services has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto streets across several European countries, with grievances ranging from expensive housing to poor conditions in schools and universities.

France saw the largest demonstrations at the weekend, with more than 500,000 people marching. Most protested peacefully, but some looted and vandalized shops, set fire to city halls and attacked police officers.

Separate protests also took place in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Albania on Saturday and Sunday. Their immediate triggers differed, although high fuel and energy costs formed part of the backdrop in several countries. The wars in Iran and Ukraine have pushed diesel prices sharply higher across the continent.

There’s no one “single trigger” for the riots, Capital Economics’ Chief Europe Economist Andrew Kenningham told CNBC. The increase in energy costs may be playing a role, but the increase is smaller than in 2022, at the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, when there were no comparable violent protests, he added.

Nevertheless, the demonstrations pose a shared challenge for governments: how to improve living conditions and maintain public services while supporting households and keeping strained public finances in check.

The demonstrations in France began last month when high school students criticized poor schooling conditions, including shoddy facilities and teacher shortages. They have since evolved into broader protests over living standards and declining public services.

In Spain, housing protests began in September after an 87-year-old woman, Maricarmen Abascal, was evicted following a 230% rent increase by an investment fund. She died a fortnight later.

Thousands of protesters also took to the streets in Portugal on Saturday to demonstrate against soaring housing costs and the cost of living.

“People obviously are protesting on the cost of living with diesel and fuel prices, but mainly on housing costs, which have been increasing substantially all over Europe, but also particularly in Portugal,” Miranda Sarmento, Portugal’s minister of state and finance, said Monday.

In Albania, protesters were angry about poor university conditions and high tuition fees, and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama. Some threw Molotov cocktails and other objects at the police and set fire to cars and litter bins.

In Italy, a march in central Milan on Saturday over living costs also ended violently, with rioters attacking the police with stones and paving blocks and setting fire to barricades.

“The underlying problem is that politicians are not able to offer hope of a better life for many Europeans because the economy is growing only slowly and…

Social unrest, political instability and mounting national debt weighed on French assets on Monday, with government bonds and Paris-listed stocks under pressure.

The euro was last seen down 0.28% against the U.S. dollar, and was 0.24% lower against the British pound.

The French 10-year bond yield jumped more than 10 basis points, remaining near its highest level in decades despite some recent easing. Higher yields represent higher borrowing costs for the government in the debt market. The country’s 2-year and 30-year yields were up 6 basis points and 8 basis points, respectively.

Stocks are also feeling the heat, with the CAC 40 index down 1.34% in morning deals on Monday. The market has significantly underperformed its European peers in recent years — despite only around 15% of its revenues being generated domestically — with banks under particular pressure.

The French stock market is historically sensitive to any widening in the so-called “OAT-Bund spread”, the extra bond yield France pays over Germany, which has hit the highest level since the European Sovereign Debt Crisis of the early 2010s. French yields now also surpass those of Italy or Greece, implying higher risk.

Widening bond spreads raise concerns about the cost for companies to raise capital and heighten fears of higher taxes and tighter regulation. The French stock market has also struggled due to the dominance of its luxury firms, which are suffering from a downturn in high-end Chinese consumer spending.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched over the weekend in protest over political paralysis, the cost of living and the state of public services, including schools and healthcare.

Mass gatherings in cities from Paris to Lyon and Marseille spilled into dramatic scenes of buildings and cars set on fire, clashes with police and more than 2,000 arrests.

“If you’re an international investor thinking about whether you want to invest in French bonds, it’s not helpful,” Mike Bell, head of market strategy at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

“It looks like either the bond markets riot, or the people riot, or both,” Bell said.

Overseas investors hold a growing share of French debt, rising from around 48% at the start of 2022 to nearly 60% at the start of 2026, potentially meaning higher volatility in the bond market in a risk-off environment.

“What’s needed in France is to get the fiscal position in order, they need to raise the retirement age — you can’t retire at 62 if the average person’s living to 84 — but if this is going on even before they start talking about that, then imagine what would happen on the streets of France if you tried to raise the retirement age to… I mean here in the U.K. it’s 68,” Bell added.

“It doesn’t make the country look that governable against a time when they need to be putting…