The Paris Administrative Court on Wednesday approved the route proposed by the police prefecture for Thursday’s demonstration calling for higher wages and support for young people. The march will run between Place de la République and Place de la Nation, despite objections from the organizers.

Unions and student and high-school groups had initially proposed marching from Place de la Bastille to Place de la Concorde, near the National Assembly. The police prefecture banned that route, citing a highly tense social climate and security concerns, including the risk of violent groups joining the demonstration.

The inter-union coalition sought to have the ban overturned, but the court rejected its appeal. In its ruling, the court said the alternative route was neither unsuitable nor disproportionate and did not seriously and unlawfully infringe the fundamental freedoms cited by the organizers.

Vincent Gautheron, head of the CGT union’s Île-de-France branch, said the unions would responsibly call on demonstrators to follow the route imposed by the prefecture. He also lamented that the right to demonstrate was subject to the availability of security forces. Earlier, he had questioned why the police rejected the Bastille-to-Concorde route on security grounds while imposing an alternative that, he said, had been refused to organizers two weeks earlier for the same reason.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has asked local officials to prepare robust security measures for what he described as a sensitive day. Around 70,000 police officers and gendarmes are to be mobilized on Thursday, matching the deployment used on October 24 and 31.

The demonstration, announced in early October, is expected to bring together private- and public-sector workers, retirees, high-school students and university students. The inter-union coalition had filed its proposed route on October 21 and had called for the police prefecture to respond in advance so the organizers could prepare security arrangements, including with the Paris city government.

Sources: Le Monde Politique.