French President Emmanuel Macron declined Laurent Nunez’s offer to resign on Monday following weekend riots and looting across the country. More than 2,300 people were arrested as security forces struggled to contain the disorder.
French President Emmanuel Macron declined an offer to resign from Interior Minister Laurent Nunez on Monday after weekend demonstrations over living costs and school conditions descended into looting and riots across France.
The political fallout follows widespread disorder over the weekend, when France counted damage after nationwide protests resulted in mass detentions and extensive property destruction in several major cities.
Macron insisted that Nunez remain in office to preserve the chain of command across police and security forces, Al Jazeera reported. In a statement released on Monday, the Elysee presidential office said the president directed Nunez to devise new tactics to address looters. Macron also instructed the minister to take every required step to provide full transparency regarding the intelligence and planning breakdowns that allowed the unrest to spiral.
Police lose control in major cities
Nunez acknowledged on Monday that security forces failed to anticipate the scale of the disorder on Saturday and lacked the numbers required to handle the large groups of looters and rioters moving along the fringes of the marches. Around 60,000 police officers and gendarmes were stationed across the country that day. The interior minister said his resignation offer was appropriate given the destruction that took place.
“On Saturday in some major cities, you couldn’t look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn’t lost control,” Nunez said.
According to Interior Ministry figures reported by Al Jazeera, more than 2,300 people were detained and almost 1,000 police and gendarmes were injured during Saturday’s protests. Protesters also sustained injuries, including one demonstrator whose hand was blown off by a police crowd-control grenade. Disorder continued on Sunday, when looters targeted approximately 30 shops in Paris, an outcome the capital’s mayor, Emmanuel Gregoire, described on Monday as unbearable. Nunez said police arrested about 350 people in Paris on Sunday and overnight.
Fires and clashes across France
More than half a million people took part in protests across the country on Saturday, with masked groups setting fires and attacking town halls, police stations, and other public buildings. In Limoges, located in central France, rioters broke into the historic 19th-century town hall overnight Saturday and set it on fire, NBC News reported. Aerial images taken the following morning showed the smoldering remains of the landmark, which had survived both world wars.
Street clashes also broke out in Lyon, where an elderly man wearing a gas mask fled tear gas at Place des Terreaux on Saturday. In central Paris, masked demonstrators set up burning barricades near Place de la Republique, lit flares, waved flags, and burned vehicles. Demonstrators also smashed shop windows and torched newsstands. NBC News reported that nearly 2,400 people were arrested and almost 1,000 police officers and firefighters were injured over the weekend, reflecting a slightly different casualty and arrest count from the figures cited by Al Jazeera.
School grievances and living costs
The weekend unrest grew out of weeks of protests organized by high school students protesting overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, and underinvestment in education. The demonstrations formed the largest youth-led protest movement in France in recent memory.
Those student demonstrations broadened on Saturday as participants attempting to revive the yellow vest movement joined residents protesting high living costs and faltering public services. While earlier student gatherings were largely peaceful, Saturday’s mobilization brought massive crowds into urban centers where rioting and looting broke out on the margins of the marches.
Legal accountability and custody reviews
Macron vowed on Sunday that the government would take legal action against those responsible for the violence. “Those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable,” he said.
Nationwide, more than 2,330 people were taken into custody over the weekend, with adults making up 70 percent of those detained, according to Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin. French authorities are now working to establish new methods to stop looting while reviewing intelligence and planning failures from the weekend deployments.
