France is bracing for another day of unrest, with shopkeepers preparing for possible violence and 70,000 riot police set to deploy across the country as protests continue.
Police forces face intense pressure to restore order after being accused of losing control in several cities last weekend. Their crowd-control tactics are also under scrutiny after leaving some teenagers seriously injured.
Last weekend’s demonstrations descended into violence across France, with town halls raided, shops looted and the iconic tourist information centre in Lyon and the town hall in Limoges burned to the ground.
Officers appeared outnumbered and overwhelmed as the protests expanded beyond anger over school conditions to include rising living costs and broader dissatisfaction with the government.
Members of the gilets jaunes movement joined students and trade unionists on the streets. In response, President Emmanuel Macron announced a crackdown on permitted protests this week.
Mr Macron said only demonstrations organised by recognised trade unions would be allowed to proceed today. Cities including Lyon, Nice and Montpellier have imposed complete bans on protests.
In Orléans, as many as 40,000 people are expected to protest against the country’s hard-right party, Rassemblement National, which is holding a two-day conference in the city.
Shopkeepers have boarded up businesses in Paris and other cities, while partial curfews have been introduced in some areas.
Major tourist attractions, including the Louvre, Orsay and Picasso museums, have closed. A home match for PSG has been postponed until Monday, while several metro stations are also shut.
Shops were boarded up in Paris on Saturday morning ahead of another day of protests
French soldiers patrol near the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris on Saturday
A bike shop in Paris protects its display windows with wooden panels ahead of the expected nationwide protests
Protesters join a demonstration in Orléans against racism, fascism and imperialism
Protesters gather in Orléans on Saturday to oppose France’s hard-right Rassemblement National
Despite Mr Macron’s crackdown, hundreds of demonstrations are still expected today. A website linked to the gilets jaunes movement has listed 500 protests and 200 other actions.
In Orléans, shops were boarded up, roads closed and 3,000 police officers and gendarmes deployed as the city, 70 miles south of Paris, prepared for possible trouble.
Protesters arrived in the city early in the morning as Marine Le Pen and party president Jordan Bardella held a two-day RN congress there. The event is intended to formally launch the party’s campaign to win the French presidency next year.
The protest march, which was originally due to begin outside the city’s Gothic cathedral, was rerouted away from Orléans’ historic centre. Riot police were deployed in force to keep the two opposing groups apart.
In Paris, soldiers from an anti-terrorism military unit patrolled the Champs-Elysées while police vans circled the Arc de Triomphe. Authorities sought to protect some of the capital’s best-known landmarks from a repeat of the unrest that shook France the previous week.
Police fired tear gas in Lyon to disperse around 150 people demonstrating in an area where all protests are prohibited. Officers launched several canisters after protesters appeared to try to block the road.
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Police said more than 100 protesters and residents were injured in Paris last Saturday. Authorities have not released a nationwide injury tally. About 2,400 people were arrested across France that day.
Officers have also faced criticism after a 17-year-old girl lost an eye while participating in a protest in Mulhouse last Saturday, while a 17-year-old boy lost a hand in Saint-Etienne. Other teenagers have suffered disabling injuries during weeks of high school blockades and street demonstrations.
French police forces are equipped with batons, tear gas, sound grenades and foam-round launchers, as well as riot shields equipped with powerful strobe lights designed to disorient protesters.
‘Intermediate-force weapons are defensive response tools that allow law enforcement officers to respond to a threat in a graduated and proportionate manner,’ French National Police said in a statement.
But critics, including families of injured teenagers, say the police have been too heavy-handed.
Some have called for bans on foam-round launchers, tear gas and stun grenades, echoing demands made by human rights groups since the violent 2018 gilets jaunes – ‘yellow vest’ – protests.
Earlier this month, Amnesty International called for a permanent ban on all stun grenades, saying they are designed to shock, disorient and sow panic, and that some can cause permanent hearing loss and life-changing injuries from blasts and shrapnel.
The use of such weapons reflects a broader shift in French policing toward keeping officers at a distance from protesters, said Jean-Marie Godard, an author specializing in France’s internal security.
French gendarmes and specialist intervention vehicles are seen near the presidential palace in Paris on Saturday
French gendarmes stand next to a multipurpose intervention vehicle outside the National Assembly in Paris
French President Emmanuel Macron said this week only demonstrations organised by recognised trade unions will be allowed to go ahead today
In the early 2000s, France’s conservative government moved away from community policing, which emphasized foot patrols and engagement with residents, toward specialized riot-control units.
People across France’s political spectrum regret abandoning the community policing model, Mr Godard said.
French policing today differs from that in many other European countries, according to Laura Keesmann, a sociologist at the University of Antwerp who led a wide-ranging comparative study of policing methods in France, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden. In the other countries studied, police often engage directly with demonstrators, sometimes mingling with crowds to defuse tensions, she said.
‘That is just really, really not the case in France,’ she said. ‘There’s much more of an authoritarian way of policing.’
Ms Keesmann stressed, however, that French police face unusually militant and sometimes violent protesters.
On the eve of last Saturday’s protests, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said his instructions were ‘very clear: the police and gendarmes should be able to use the entirety of the intermediate weapons at their disposal’.
France has more than 250,000 national police officers and gendarmes. Police generally operate in cities, while gendarmes usually cover rural areas and smaller towns. Both forces fall under the Interior Ministry, which said 997 officers and gendarmes were injured during Saturday’s unrest, seven of them seriously.
Mr Godard said protest movements have become increasingly decentralised as labor unions have lost influence over demonstrations, drawing a wider range of participants, including radical groups.
French authorities have blamed much of the recent violence on far-Left radicals, accusing them of orchestrating clashes with police and targeting public buildings. Others took advantage of the unrest to loot businesses, authorities said.
