France counts the cost of its worst riots in years, and braces for more

The protests that began in a French secondary school in September reached their most violent point last weekend. On Saturday 17th October, the Interior Ministry counted 550,000 people marching across France,¹ about 3,000 shops were damaged or looted,² and in Limoges, a city in central France, rioters set fire to the city hall, a listed building inaugurated in 1883. Its clock tower collapsed overnight.³

This week France counted the cost and tried to stop it happening again.

Arrests, curfews and a resignation refused

By Monday at least 2,400 people had been arrested, according to the Associated Press.⁴ By Tuesday the figure was about 2,500, of whom 123 were being held for trial, according to the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin.³ The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said it was "a miracle" that no one had been killed.⁴

The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, offered to resign, saying the authorities had "lost control" in some cities. President Emmanuel Macron refused and ordered an inquiry.⁴ Lecornu then asked the prefects, the state's representatives in each French département, to impose "very limited" local curfews. Parts of Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nice and Marseille were placed under overnight curfews,³ and the nights that followed were mostly calm.⁵

In Limoges, prosecutors charged two men, aged 34 and 66, whom they link to what they called "radical-left networks", over the fire.⁶ On Friday Lecornu visited the city and promised that the state would rebuild the city hall exactly as it was.⁷ The city's mayor, Guillaume Guérin, told the BBC: "What happened here will have an influence on the upcoming presidential election."⁶ That election is due next spring, and Macron cannot stand again.

The students meet Macron

On Friday 23rd October about 20 representatives of secondary-school students' organisations met Macron at the Élysée Palace for around three hours. It was his first meeting with them since the protests began. According to the Élysée, he offered a "deep overhaul" of Parcoursup, the online system that allocates university places, along with more teachers and a reform of how pupils are represented in their schools. Detailed commitments are to follow when Lecornu meets them on Monday 26th October.⁷

The students were unconvinced. "We are not satisfied, we are waiting for our meeting with the prime minister," said Nathanaël Combary, president of the organisation Renouveau lycéen.⁸ They called for the protests to continue,⁹ and the private-sector unions called a strike for 5th November.⁹

Saturday under guard

For Saturday 24th October's national day of protest, the government deployed about 70,000 police and gendarmes, 20% more than the week before.⁹ The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and other Paris museums closed,² along with 24 metro stations.¹⁰ Nuñez said he had ordered "the utmost firmness".⁷ Protest bans in Marseille and Limoges were overturned in court,¹⁰ and in Orléans, where the National Rally party was holding its congress, the prefecture counted 11,000 people at a march against the far right.¹

The day was largely peaceful until its end. The Interior Ministry estimated that 410,000 people marched across France, 110,000 of them in Paris, against 550,000 the Saturday before; the unions put the total at about 800,000.¹¹ At the end of the Paris march, at Porte de Vincennes, groups of masked men threw bottles and stones at the police, who answered with tear gas, water cannon and stun grenades. Police also fired tear gas to keep marchers out of the centres of Lyon, Lille, Montpellier, Nantes and Toulouse, and bins were set alight in Marseille.¹² By the evening Nuñez said nearly 1,000 people had been arrested, a number he expected to rise, and that two had been seriously injured, one in Toulouse and one in Clermont-Ferrand. There was no repeat of the looting of the week before.¹¹

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The same week elsewhere

The protests have spread beyond France since September, mostly over the cost of living, school funding and housing. This week:

• Italy: Giorgia Meloni's government adopted a security decree creating a crime of "violent participation in a demonstration",¹³ sent 500 soldiers to Milan and searched 150 homes before Saturday's marches.¹⁰ On Saturday the security operation in Milan stopped protesters from gathering.¹¹
• Portugal: police cleared cost-of-living protest camps in Lisbon and Porto on 21st October and arrested 55 people; protesters returned within hours.¹⁴
• Greece: thousands of students and teachers marched in Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras on 21st October.¹⁵
• Albania: the prime minister, Edi Rama, blamed a "hybrid war" for unrest that had injured about 300 people, more than half of them police.¹⁶ On Saturday riot police in Tirana fired tear gas at thousands of anti-government protesters.¹¹
• Spain and Belgium: in Barcelona more than 100 people were arrested on Saturday after a student protest turned violent, and there were clashes in Brussels.¹¹