Hundreds of angry young demonstrators marched through Paris on Thursday to protest the victory of France's far-right National Front party in the European Elections last Sunday.
The anti-EU party, secured the largest number of votes in France with more than 25 percent.
Protesters gathered at Bastille Square in Paris, while demonstrations also took place in other French cities.
The protesters had planned to repeat scenes from 12 years ago, when in 2002, the firebrand father of current National Front leader Marine Le Pen shocked the country by beating his Socialist rival out of the run-off to that year's presidential election, an estimated 1.3 million people took to the streets in stunned protest.
This time, there was no such mass protest.
Attempts to rally anti-National Front demonstrators in Paris on Thursday's Ascension Day public holiday mustered only about 4,200 people, mostly high-school and university students, according to police estimates.
Since taking control of the party from her father in 2011, 45-year-old Marine Le Pen, a trained lawyer, has transformed the image of a party once tainted by association with anti-Semitism and sought, step by step, to make of it a party of government.
A member of the Young Communist Party who took part in the protest said the National Front does not protect the interest of France's youth.
"The youth are going in the street in order to contest this party which is not what they, they are not what they say, they are not protecting the people, they are just dividing people, and will not give a future to the youth so I am really happy to see them in the streets today," said Anne Sabourin.
Another protester, 28-year-old social worker Marion Faucheuxs said she fears the party could make racism commonplace.
"It's unbearable that a party openly racist could arrive first at the elections, it makes commonplace a certain racist sentiment in France," Marion said.
"What worries me personally is how this way of thinking is rendered commonplace in the political and media speech, the reason why we are here today is to show these people that there is a counter power and that some disagree with these opinions," she added.
Aside from the odd slip - Le Pen was accused of incitement to racial hatred for a 2010 remark likening Muslim street prayers to the Nazi occupation of France - Le Pen has marginalized the party's old guard and punished overt racism in party ranks.
AP