Im einstigen Büro von Erich Honecker buhlt die deutsche Politik beim ersten „Invest in Germany“-Gipfel um ausländisches Kapital. Während das Kanzleramt die Konferenz initiiert hat, verspricht Friedrich Merz weitreichende Reformen. Es sollen Milliardenzusagen fließen. Eine ist bereits da: Von Nvidia-Chef Jensen Huang. Rasmus Buchsteiner analysiert zusammen mit Maximilian Stascheit, wie glaubwürdig dieser neue deutsche Pitch ist und welche Hürden ausländische Investoren weiterhin abschrecken könnten.

Im 200-Sekunden-Interview warnt die finanzpolitische Sprecherin der Grünen, Katharina Beck, vor einem Ausverkauf heimischer Interessen. Angesichts gescheiterter Großprojekte wie bei Intel fordert sie bessere Rahmenbedingungen, um privates Kapital zu hebeln. Dabei steht die drängende Frage im Raum, wie Europa seine technologische Souveränität wahren kann, ohne sich blind von US-amerikanischen Geldgebern abhängig zu machen.

Jenseits des Rheins eskaliert derweil die Lage: Gewalttätige Schülerproteste und die Rückkehr der Gelbwesten setzen die französische Regierung massiv unter Druck. Marion Solletty von POLITICO Paris berichtet, wie die Demonstrationen weitaus größer ausfallen als erwartet und dem Staat das Geld für Zugeständnisse fehlt. Ein politisches Vakuum, das nun vor allem Marine Le Pen und der Rechten in die Karten spielt.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Rixa Fürsen, Maximilian Stascheit und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH
Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin
Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0
information@axelspringer.de
Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B
USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390
Geschäftsführer: Christoph Eck-Schmidt, Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna

PARIS — A wave of mass protests swept across France Saturday, with dozens of peaceful marches taking place alongside scenes of violent clashes between demonstrators and police forces.

The demonstrations were also a battleground for candidates ahead of next year’s high-stakes presidential election: The far-right’s Marine Le Pen sided with law enforcement while the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon backed protesters. 

Throughout the day, media reported incidents in the country’s largest cities including Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille and Paris. Dozens of rioters clashed with law enforcement on the capital’s Place de la République, next to a much larger number of demonstrators gathered for an authorized march that started from Paris’s central square.

Media also reported looting across multiple cities later in the day.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu posted a message on X backing police forces and slamming violent rioters. He accused “ultra-left groups” of “organizing violence” and said looters would be brought to justice. Lecornu is overseeing a crisis meeting on Saturday evening, AFP reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Lecornu’s comments on Saturday evening, although he didn’t mention “ultra-left groups.”

“No place for violence in our Republic,” he said. “We will stand together against those who seed chaos, who only seek to tear down our institutions and who prevent those who peacefully express their demands from doing it.”

Students, farmers and members of the Yellow Jacket movement, among others, took to the streets on Saturday in a “convergence of struggles” to protest rising living costs, sluggish wages and deep disagreements with the government.

About 800,000 protestors took to the streets across the country, according to organizers. France’s interior ministry said 550,000 people took part in the protests.

“A very large majority of people are protesting without violence,” Paris’s police prefecture said on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday’s demonstrations grew out of the student protests that began last month with school blockades and calls for better study conditions, more teachers and more funding. The movement has since spread nationwide — and become a political issue as the campaign for next year’s presidential election heats up.

In recent weeks, the government has struggled to deal with the crisis — which Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described as “urban violence” — and is hoping the student movement will now fade because of a two-week school holiday that started Friday evening.

“The mobilization is marked by a very strong involvement of the ultra-left movement, which is only looking to cause disorder,” Nuñez’s office said Saturday, adding that the minister reiterated his “instructions of utmost  firmness” to local prefects and police forces.

Footage showed Lyon’s tourist board office engulfed in flames on the city’s Place Bellecour. A police station was vandalized in Marseille, where a group of “rioters” also entered city hall, Mayor Benoît Payan said. He toldBFMTV that “damage was objectively fairly limited,” although the act of vandalism was “unacceptable.” The headquarters of right-wing TV channel CNews in Paris was also targeted, authorities said.

The government has defended the law enforcement response to the student protests despite numerous allegations of police brutality, including incidents that left one teenager with a severed hand and another blind in one eye. Nuñez said the use of “stun grenades” was authorized on Saturday, after a temporary ban on their use against students.

About 163 people had already been arrested in Paris by mid-afternoon, authorities said.

The far-left France Unbowed slammed the police response to the protests.

The party’s presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon participated in the demonstrations in Paris and backed protesters — he also criticized the media for only showing violent clashes while “everything is proceeding peacefully, with tens of thousands of people calmly taking part.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, far-right leaders Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen pledged support for the police. “Legitimate social demands have once again been hijacked by the far left,” Le Pen said, as an increasing number of polls show she could end up in the second round against Mélenchon.

Bardella said on Saturday that protests were made up entirely of “chaos professionals,” adding: “As we said, working France, which is taking the full brunt of inflation and cost-of-living struggles, did not take to the streets today.”

The police and protesters clashed in other European countries on Saturday, too. A student-led protest against corruption and unemployment in Albania’s capital Tirana reportedly turned violent, asdid another one in Brussels.

This story was updated. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.

PARIS — French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on Wednesday pledged to address protesting high school students’ concerns while also announcing the release of strategic fuel reserves to lower prices.

“The anger among young people didn’t come out of nowhere,” Lecornu said as he addressed the nation.

The center-right prime minister said his government’s first policy responses to protesters’ concerns — including run-down schools, a shortage of substitute teachers, and a desire for more manageable schedules — would come later this month. The government will consider submissions on a public platform set up Tuesday to allow students to voice their grievances.

On Tuesday, between 256,000 people, according to police, and 450,000, according to organizers, joined demonstrations across France. Unions, teachers and left-wing political parties took to the streets in solidarity with high school students.

But discontent in France extends beyond schools. A surge in fuel prices, triggered by the U.S.-led war in Iran, has added to concerns about the cost of living.

Online calls for a Yellow Jackets-style protest on Oct. 17 have emerged in response to rising fuel prices.

“Last Friday, [the G7] decided to release strategic [fuel] reserves… As part of this effort, we will make 10 million barrels of diesel from our reserves available to distributors in France,” Lecornu announced, claiming that the supply increase would lower diesel prices by €0.12 to €0.18 per liter.

France still has 8 million barrels of oil products to release under a wider deal brokered in March after the outbreak of the war in Iran, and had privately signaled Wednesday morning that it might release an additional 2 million barrels of diesel on top of that, as POLITICO reported earlier on Wednesday. It’s unclear whether the 10 million figure includes that earlier commitment.

The French energy ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Lecornu also reached out to French farmers, who have regularly protested in recent years to draw attention to the sector’s economic hardships. “Among those hardest hit by the accumulation of these crises are our farmers,” Lecornu said.

He said new measures to supplement an emergency bill for farmers, which already includes more than €1 billion in spending, would be unveiled Thursday.

Nicolas Camut contributed to this report.