France Counts The Damage After Cost-of-Living Protests Turn Into Riots

Burnt cars, smashed shop windows and, in Limoges, a gutted 19th-century town hall. That's what France woke up to on Sunday.

Saturday began with largely peaceful nationwide protests against rising fuel prices, the cost of living and declining public services, including schools. Around 550,000 people took part, the BBC reports. As the day went on, groups of rioters, some masked and dressed in black, set fire to cars and buildings and looted shops in cities including Paris, Marseille and Lille. Smaller clashes continued on Sunday in parts of Paris and Lyon.

The official numbers kept rising through the weekend. By Sunday evening the BBC, citing France's interior ministry, put Saturday's toll at about 2,400 arrests and about 1,000 police officers injured, seven of them seriously. Africanews reported that a 17-year-old in Saint-Étienne lost his right hand to a crowd-control grenade.

President Emmanuel Macron chaired a crisis meeting at the Élysée and then addressed the nation. "We all feel anger and shame," he said, according to the BBC, drawing a line between protesters' legitimate demands and the people who destroyed and looted.

What Macron has promised

He has ordered a review into whether there were failings in intelligence gathering or police preparation, Reuters reports via Daily Maverick, and promised full transparency over a police response that included tear gas, water cannon and batons. Prefects and mayors will be able to ban certain gatherings, and the BBC says local officials will draw up measures to protect shops and civic buildings. This week, the government is due to bring students, teachers, lawmakers, unions and business leaders together to work on what Macron called concrete proposals.

The politics arrived fast. The unrest followed weeks of student protests and comes about six months before France's presidential election, with Macron in his final months in office. Africanews reports that US Vice President JD Vance blamed immigration and a failure of assimilation, without offering evidence. Marine Le Pen accused Jean-Luc Mélenchon's party of legitimising the violence, while Mélenchon, who backed the demonstrations, urged people to stay away from looting.

Don't lose sight of where this started: fuel, household bills and stretched public services. Anyone filling a tank in Lagos or paying an energy bill in London knows that anger, and it deserves better than a row over who to blame.