People are set to take to the streets of Germany and France to protest against high living costs on Halloween, amid growing public anger across Europe.
Student protests, at times violent, have erupted simultaneously across Europe, including Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and France, since mid-September.
In France, activists have again called for people to reignite nationwide protests against the high cost of living and faltering public services on Saturday.
Meanwhile, an alliance of groups called "Gen Z regelt" (Gen Z is sorting it) has called for supporters in Germany to turn out in more than 30 cities to call for more spending on schools, climate protection and housing, and to protest against any plans to return to mandatory military service.
The team behind "Gen Z regelt" has stressed on its social media and website that “Our protest is peaceful, without exception. Violence goes against everything we stand for. Only through peaceful means can we achieve something together.”
By Friday, over 160,000 people had registered on the website saying they planned to take part in the protests.
Alexander Throm, of the ruling conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) parliamentary group, wrote in the Handelsblatt business newspaper, “Scenes like those in France must be prevented at all costs.”
The co-leader of the opposition Green Party, however, warned against attempts to place the youth protests under general suspicion in advance.
“The [CDU’s] rhetoric, which seeks to criminalize these protests pre-emptively and paint them as the work of marauding gangs, may even drive people towards radicalization,” Felix Banaszak told the RND media group.
Gearing up for the protests, Berlin’s police chief, Barbara Slowik Meisel, said she would deploy an additional 1,500 officers in the capital, though she said “We have no concrete evidence of any coordinated looting operations being planned.”
In France, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned that Saturday looked like “a very high risk” day, noting that 70,000 police and gendarmes, including elite units, will be deployed.
He noted that peaceful demonstrations would not be permitted in city centers over what he said was “a risk of public disorder”.
Nunez claimed on Thursday that violent protests would probably come after mainstream cost-of-living demonstrations had officially ended, as some calls demand “revolution”.
“We are seeing many calls from the labor movement, the radicalized far left and certain radicalized gilets jaunes [yellow vests], urging people to attend rallies on public streets starting at 8pm in many cities across France,” he said, vowing an “extremely firm” security response.
United Nations human rights experts have condemned the “excessive use of force” by French authorities against nationwide student protests, warning that mass arrests, detentions, and serious injuries were deterring demonstrators from exercising their fundamental rights.
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