French Arrests Double to 2,400 as Macron Speaks of Shame
About 2,400 people have been arrested and around a thousand police and gendarmes injured, the interior ministry says — double and sevenfold the figures available this morning — after 550,000 demonstrated against fuel prices, the cost of living and declining public services. In a national address the president said protesters had “sought to bring down the republic”, and: “We all feel anger and shame.”
Emmanuel Macron criticised “unbridled violence” and blamed “factious groups from the ultra-left, joined by numerous delinquents” — a diagnosis his government and Marine Le Pen now share, which is itself notable. Prefects and mayors are to draft measures protecting shops and civic buildings, and prefects may be allowed to ban street gatherings. The political cost is landing on one man: politicians on both left and right are calling for the interior minister Laurent Nuñez to resign, after a government that appeared caught out by the scale of Saturday’s violence. The prime minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government would not be “intimidated”. The physical damage is concentrated in Limoges, where the nineteenth-century city hall has been gutted and its clock tower and roof have collapsed. Disorder continued on Sunday at the Place de la République in Paris and on a smaller scale in Lyon, with teargas, stun grenades, e-bikes piled and set alight and graffiti reading “introduction to civil war”. Protests also took place on Saturday in Spain, Italy and Portugal. The number of officers hurt is the figure that has moved most: about a thousand police and gendarmes, on the ministry’s count, against the 150 reported this morning.