Paris ? Parliament gave final approval Wednesday to extending France’s state of emergency for three months after the government said the powers are still needed to end the country’s worst civil unrest in four decades.

The Senate voted 202-125 to extend emergency powers until February. The extra powers – which were approved by the lower house on Tuesday – allow regional and local officials to impose curfews and permit police searches at night, among other measures.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told the Senate that tensions in troubled neighborhoods justified continued state of emergency powers. The number of towns affected by unrest dropped to 79 overnight, down from 102 the previous night and more than 300 at the peak of the unrest, he said.

“Seventy-nine is naturally too many,” Sarkozy added. “The future cannot be built on violence.”

National police said vandals set fire to 163 vehicles overnight, down from 215 the previous night – a continuing drop that indicated an “almost normal situation everywhere” in France. Most violence was in the provinces, with 27 vehicles torched in the Paris region, compared with 60 a night earlier.