Le Figaro Blames Macron as French Riots Yield 2,400 Arrests
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirmed more than 500 emergency personnel were injured as protesters burned the Limoges town hall.
French authorities arrested at least 2,400 people after nationwide demonstrations devolved into arson and looting over the weekend, according to The Associated Press. More than 500 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were injured, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told the AP, as masked groups attacked public buildings and clashed with security forces across the country.
The scale of the damage prompted a direct attack on President Emmanuel Macron from Le Figaro. Vincent Trémolet de Villers wrote in the conservative newspaper Sunday that France’s political establishment had “methodically dismantled all the moral, security, cultural, and economic safeguards that allow a society to remain standing.”
Roughly 550,000 people took part in Saturday’s demonstrations, authorities estimated, while organizers put turnout at 800,000, according to the AP. What began as protests fueled by anger over rising living costs, school conditions and public services turned violent within hours. Hundreds of businesses were looted nationwide. In Limoges, rioters set fire to the historic town hall, leaving the building “largely lost.” Unrest continued into Sunday in Paris, where police used tear gas near Place de la République.
France has faced similar explosions of street violence before, most recently in 2023 following the police shooting of a teenager, and during the months-long Yellow Vest movement in 2018. Those episodes also produced mass arrests and property destruction, but the speed at which Saturday’s protests fractured into coordinated attacks on municipal infrastructure drew immediate comparisons to the worst nights of the 2005 suburban riots.
Trémolet de Villers directed his sharpest criticism at Macron’s past demands that police show greater empathy toward demonstrators. “Emmanuel Macron’s reprimands toward a police force he deemed insufficiently ’empathetic’ — directed at officers under attack by bolts, cobblestones, and mortar fireworks — will remain an indelible stain,” the article stated, according to a translation. The piece also accused the justice system of being “lenient toward criminals” and claimed far-left militias operated with impunity.
Macron addressed the nation Sunday evening. “Nothing will excuse their actions. We all tonight feel angry. We feel shame as well,” he said, according to a translation of his televised remarks. He ordered officials to increase security around public buildings and businesses, warning that protests could be restricted in some areas.
He also acknowledged the economic grievances driving younger participants. “The youth of our nation are expressing great anguish and concern about the future, the conditions of where their careers will take them, what role they will be able to play in society,” Macron said. “Those people who looted need to pay for their crimes.”
Scrutiny of the president intensified after reports that he attended a Celine Dion concert with his wife, Brigitte, on Friday night, hours before the first major clashes erupted. Macron’s office and Le Figaro could not immediately be reached by Fox News Digital for comment. Of the 2,400 arrested nationwide, 855 were detained in the Paris region alone, the AP reported.
