Latest: Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday, in a post on X, that new curfews will be imposed where necessary, with local authorities coordinating with mayors on whether to impose them in their prefectures, Al Jazeera reported. Monday night passed without major incidents, police confirmed, after Saturday’s demonstrations drew more than half a million people and ended in looting and arson in numerous locations, with more than 2,500 people arrested. Digital Minister Anne Le Henanff is due to meet social media bosses on Tuesday over looted goods being sold online, Lecornu meets union officials on Wednesday and political parties on Thursday, and demonstrators have called further protests for this Saturday, which the main trade unions have not backed.
President Emmanuel Macron refused the resignation of Interior Minister Laurent Nunez on Monday, after a weekend of violent protests over rising living costs and student grievances in cities including Lyon. The Elysee said Nunez submitted his resignation on Sunday, and that the president refused it given the necessity for continued leadership of law enforcement at this time.
Macron coupled the refusal with an admission. He spoke of failures that led to the violence and asked Nunez to take all necessary steps to ensure transparency over the failures in planning and intelligence that preceded it, and to put in place new operational methods for security forces. Protesters in Lyon burned a tourism office and carried placards depicting the president with a guillotine, according to the agency photograph captioning the report.
The decision keeps the interior minister in place while making the presidency the owner of the inquiry into what went wrong. It also lands in the same week as the National Assembly’s budget votes, covered separately in today’s brief, where the government’s spending plans are one of the grievances driving the street movement.