Following the wave of urban violence that hit France last weekend, the French Government has announced the establishment of localized curfews in certain areas of the country – without yet specifying which ones – and the implementation of a partial unemployment mechanism for the nearly 3,000 businesses affected.
The French Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has appeared before the media after a crisis meeting after a weekend marked by looting and looting, which emerged on the sidelines of the massive demonstrations on October 17 against the rising cost of life and the degradation of education and health, after almost 10 years of President Emmanuel Macron’s mandate.
With Macron himself on an official trip to the Persian Gulf, Lecornu has been responsible for communicating the measures with which the Government hopes to stop a wave of violence whose most recent precedents are the riots over the death of the minor Nahel (June 2023), the pension reform (winter 2023) and the ‘yellow vests’ (2018).
The prime minister has justified the imminent implementation of curfews, without specifying in which areas, before declaring a state of emergency, which grants more powers to law enforcement.
“It is a curfew by territory, partial, it seems to me that, at this moment, it is a more adapted instrument than decreeing a state of emergency,” declared Lecornu, who has not ruled out a state of emergency later, while indicating that the Ministry of the Interior will communicate a “quite precise cartography” of the affected areas throughout the afternoon.
Measures for affected businesses
Given the serious economic consequences of the riots, Lecornu has also announced that workers in businesses affected by the riots will be able to benefit from a partial unemployment benefit from Tuesday, with 100% coverage by the State.
This is an “employment protection” measure, since “we cannot allow social damage after the material destruction,” added the president, without specifying what its cost will be at a time of extreme economic fragility in France.
In fact, this very Monday investors have punished the French social instability both in the price of its 10-year bonds (the differential with the German reference bond increased to 144 basis points), and in the Parisian CAC-40 stock index (-1.5% at the halfway point of the session).
All of this in a pre-electoral context (the presidential elections are in six months) and with a Government budget project that has difficulty succeeding in the French National Assembly, fragmented into three blocks (left, macronist center-right and far-right).
Lecornu accuses the ultra-left
In his appearance before the press, Lecornu has again accused the far-left of trying to destabilize the presidential elections in which, according to several polls, the far-right Marine Le Pen appears as the favorite, with the leftist Jean Luc Mélenchon in second place.
“There is a whole nebula that can be activated to question the calendar and the holding of the presidential elections,” warned Lecornu, who, citing the secret services, have delved into the fact that this far-left movement “wants to organize profound disorder in the country until the presidential elections.”
In that sense, he acknowledged that it has been “a miracle” that there have been no fatalities, he once again supported the criticized actions of the law enforcement forces and warned that the Government is launching “a massive criminal response” after the looting and looting in numerous businesses in France.
Lecornu has indicated that, in the Paris area alone, there are 200 investigators working to identify the looters thanks to video surveillance images, since many of them acted with their faces uncovered.
The head of Government explained that the cooperation of citizens will also be requested “to help in the identification” of the suspects.
As of 8:00 a.m. on Monday, 2,331 people remained in police custody due to the riots and looting, according to the Ministry of Justice, which noted that 70% were of legal age and that the Prosecutor’s Office requested preventive detention in more than 80% of the cases.
Saturday’s riots left businesses looted, attacks on public buildings and clashes with security forces in Paris and other French cities.
