The curfew moved to eleven

The Paris police prefecture has issued new orders for Wednesday night. They “prohibit the presence of adults as well as minors” in the République and Halles areas from 23:00 until 06:00 on Thursday¹. In Lyon, the Rhône prefect renewed the curfew and the ban on gatherings, but it now starts at 23:00 instead of 21:00¹. That is the most useful line of the day: the authorities are giving back two hours of the evening because the previous nights were calm.

The count. Justice minister Gérald Darmanin, visiting Marseille, said there had been 2,500 police custody cases since the violence began, and 174 people have been sent to prison for handling stolen goods or assault¹. He said most of them had no criminal record¹. Those are the numbers of a justice system working through a backlog, and they will keep rising for a while after the streets go quiet.

Saturday. The weekend is the test. The yellow-vest coordination has filed a route for Saturday from Bastille to Opéra; the police prefecture had not confirmed it by Wednesday morning¹. Interior minister Laurent Nuñez has sent instructions to prefects, including to ban gatherings “likely to disturb public order”¹. In Toulon, the Var prefect banned face coverings in public from Wednesday 14:00 to Monday 09:00, set a Saturday curfew for unaccompanied minors and banned demonstrations in the city centre for that day¹. Toulouse’s Ligue 1 match was moved from Saturday to Sunday at the prefecture’s request¹.

The tone at the top. Speaking from Doha, President Emmanuel Macron said a state of emergency was not needed and that the measures in place had brought calm back since Monday¹. He will meet the intelligence services on Thursday morning for a detailed account of 17 October¹.

For you, if you live in or are travelling to a French city this week: the rules are set by local orders, street by street, and they change daily. Read the prefecture’s order for your area rather than a national headline.