French PM vows 'massive' police deployment for new demonstrations Saturday

Now, let's cross to Luke Schrago, who's at Place de la République, which has been the flashpoint for much of the violence that occurred last weekend. Luke, what is the atmosphere like there at the moment? Well, here at Paris' Place de la République, cleaning has been ongoing for the last couple of days, trying to get rid of the remaining traces of the violence from the weekend. You might be able to make out the statue just behind me, which is still covered with a great deal of graffiti. That'll take some time longer to remove. And as you've just mentioned, the Prime Minister, Sébastien Le Cornu, announcing a massive police presence ahead of further demonstrations expected this weekend. But the government has also been pointing to its use of curfews as a success in tamping down the violence. Le Cornu announcing that there will be more put into place as and when they are needed. We can also say that we now know that Marseille, France's second largest city, will see a curfew go into place on Tuesday evening. that will go into place from 10pm until 5am and may well be rolled out into place every evening, at least until Friday. Elsewhere, the French Parliament's also agreed to launch a commission into the weekend's violence with the government vowing criminal proceedings against the rioters. Now, against this background, the students who were the very origin of the protest, their demonstrations breaking out around a month ago, they've been saying that they don't want their message to be forgotten. It reminds you that they were protesting over conditions throughout French education. And they've seen it start to get subsumed a little bit amidst the wider and growing discontent and particularly the levels of violence. The schools are on holiday for the next couple of weeks. But they've roundly denounced the events of the weekend as something of a distraction and deeply criticised the government's response, or as they see it, a lack thereof, as sheer contempt. Their students at the moment see themselves at a crossroads with their desire for their demands not to be forgotten, even as the government faces the widest social discontent that it's seen in years, again, ahead of these further demonstrations next weekend. Luke, given that we aren't being told that there will be further protests on Saturday and possibly on Sunday as well, what have local businesses been telling you, especially as they begin clean-up operations, with the knowledge that we could be heading towards a similar situation during the next weekend? Well, as you heard Prime Minister's questions there, quite a contentious debate with politicians doing a lot of finger-pointing. The view on the ground is one of boarded-up windows with that clean-up, as I've mentioned, well underway. We know now that 3,000 businesses or more were affected by violence and protesting across France with damages expected to run into the hundreds of millions of euros. now the government has announced certain aid measures it announced some of those measures on monday such as a fast track towards financial aid and even partial unemployment measures for employees who are unable to work with their businesses being closed they also announced the 50,000 euro interest-free loans on Tuesday that should help to get some of those restarted but there is it has to be said something of a difference in the nature of the financial aid that's going to be required you can look at the larger chains supermarkets for instance that might at least be able to absorb some of the cost of the damages but for those smaller businesses like family-run institutions for example they may be facing major losses and they're asking a lot of questions about how these measures are going to be paid out and particularly how they're going to be paid for and even then there are still concerns running wide that the promise of financial aid have not allayed. With this broadened social unrest, with new demonstrations planned for the weekend, the worry is that they may just be boarding up their windows for a second round of violence while the underlying social issues have yet to be addressed. Luke Schrager reporting there from central Paris. Thank you.