Paris — Groups of defiant "yellow vest" demonstrators faced off with tens of thousands of police around France on Saturday, but their numbers appeared lower on a fifth and decisive weekend for the anti-government movement.

President Emmanuel Macron, facing the biggest crisis of his presidency, announced a series of concessions on Monday to defuse the "yellow vest" explosive crisis, which swelled up from rural and small-town France last month.

He is hoping the package of tax and minimum wage measures for low-income workers, coupled with a terror attack on Tuesday night in Strasbourg and bitter winter weather, will bring calm to the country.

By lunchtime, crowds in Paris were much smaller than last Saturday and there were no reports of serious violence from regional France after a month of clashes and disruption.

Police had arrested around 60 people in the capital by 11:00 am (1000 GMT) compared with 500 at the same time last weekend, according to figures released by the local government.

"I've come to demonstrate peacefully; as soon as there's violence, I'm leaving," Monaem Zarhouni, a 43-year-old father of two, told AFP in the capital on Saturday.

"My wife's unemployed too and we live on 700 euros (800 dollars) a month. It's tough, we're always struggling," he said.

"Last time, we were here for taxes," a 28-year-old "yellow vest" called Jeremy told AFP as he arrived on the Champs-Elysees in the freezing cold.

"This is for the institutions: we want more direct democracy," he said, adding that people needed to "shout to make themselves heard".

Throughout the morning, riot police played a game of cat-and-mouse with groups of hundreds of protesters moving around the centre of Paris, much of which has been cordoned off from traffic.

There were isolated incidents of tear gas being fired, but a fraction of the amount used on the weekends of December 8 or December 1 when graffiti was daubed on the Arc de Triomphe in scenes that shocked France.

Outside Paris, groups of "yellow vests" continued to occupy roundabouts to slow down traffic, and there were jams on the A6, A7, A61 and A64 motorways in southern France.

Authorities reported the seventh death linked to the demonstrations in a fatal road accident Friday evening near the France-Belgium border caused by a blockade.

More than 1,400 people have been injured since the protests began on November 17.

Until this week, a clear majority of French people had backed the protests, which sprung up initially over tax hikes on transport fuel before snowballing into wider opposition to Macron's pro-business agenda and style of governing.

But two polls published on Tuesday -- in the wake of Macron's concessions -- suggested the country was now split broadly 50-50 on whether the protests should continue.

"We expect slightly fewer people (in the streets) but individuals who are slightly more determined," junior interior minister Laurent Nunez said late Friday.

Around 8,000 police were on duty in Paris on Saturday, the same number as last weekend, backed up by 14 armored vehicles, water cannons and horses, which are used for crowd control.

Around 69,000 security forces were mobilized across France, down from 89,000 last Saturday when 2,000 people were detained. — AFP