France's Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is holding a crisis cabinet meeting on Monday to assess a weekend of violence and looting across the country, in what were some of the worst scenes of public disorder in modern French history. On Saturday over half a million mainly peaceful protesters demonstrated against rising living costs and dwindling access to decent public services, including a good state education. But the protests turned nasty after groups of black-clad, masked activists and vandals appeared.
An estimated 1,500 shops and businesses were looted and destroyed. Riot police fired tear gas and turned water cannon on crowds. They were seen hitting people with batons in several places.
France's interior ministry said about 1,000 police officers were injured on Saturday, seven of them seriously. There had been rumours in France that President Emmanuel Macron may introduce a temporary curfew in parts of the country, or even impose a state of emergency to help calm the febrile atmosphere. In the end, he used a televised address to the nation on Sunday to call for national unity and to try to assure the French public that the perpetrators of the violence would be punished.
Macron's speech has been roundly criticised on social media forums and by political opponents for lacking concrete detail. How will vandals and rioters now be brought to account? How might France's towns and cities be better protected - especially since new mass demonstrations have been announced in a couple of weeks' time?
Exactly how will destroyed businesses be compensated? And when will a dialogue be established with students and teachers' bodies on the subject of education? On Sunday the Secretary General of the CGT union, Sophie Binet, accused Macron of failing to address students' concerns, the cost-of-living crisis or the dwindling quality of public services in France.
He's apparently passed that baton to Prime Minister Lecornu. Yet he and his interior minister are charged by many in France with being woefully ill-prepared and under-policed ahead of Saturday's multiple, scheduled protests. The president of France's lower house of parliament, Yaël Braun-Pivet, says she wants to open an inquiry into exactly what happened this weekend and why.
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