cent days, one hundred days. This is how much time French President Emmanuel Macron had given himself in April to recover. In this period of “reconciliation and action”, Macron hoped, among other things by raising the minimum wage, that calm would return after the violent protests against the increase in the retirement age. The hundred days to the national holiday, July 14, have not been met. On Friday, Macron had to leave the EU summit prematurely after a working breakfast in Brussels for the second consecutive crisis meeting in Paris.
Because in the night from Thursday to Friday, forty thousand police officers could not prevent a primary school, library, hotel, bus depot, swimming pool, tram and thousands of cars from catching fire and shops being looted in Paris, Roubaix, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse and Lille. Two hundred police officers were injured, nearly nine hundred people were arrested. The third night of violence followed the death of a 17-year-old in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre by a police bullet. Nahel M. will be buried on Saturday. The suspected officer is in custody.
Read also Death of French teenager by police bullet leads to furious reactions
It is now up to Macron to prevent a repeat of 2005, when deadly police deployment led to twenty-one consecutive days of violent protest. The president called last Tuesday’s shooting a day later “inexcusable” and showed understanding for “the emotion of the nation”. But that turned out to be insufficient.
On Friday after the crisis meeting, Macron took a different tack. He condemned the violence as “unacceptable exploitation of the death of a teenager” gave the police “additional resources”. He also wants to work with social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat to have inflammatory messages and images removed and to track down rioters. He also called on parents to keep their teenagers at home.
Underneath the vandalism is great dissatisfaction with the French police and politics. In the poor banlieues, people have long felt ill-treated by the police. And that criticism is widely shared. Earlier this year, the Council of Europe accused France of “excessive force” by the police during the pension protests. The United Nations reprimanded the French police on Friday for racist and discriminatory police conduct.
State of emergency
Experts say the sting is also in a law introduced in 2017 to make permanent some temporary anti-terror measures that resulted from the state of emergency introduced after the 2015 Paris attacks. Since then, officers have been allowed to shoot earlier. And since then, the number of similar fatal incidents has increased sharply.
Left opposition politicians now want Macron to review that law. The right-wing opposition is demanding tougher action, even the imposition of a state of emergency, which also happened during the riots in 2005 – then for the first time in fifty years. The right also blames Macron for his quick conviction of the agent before the investigation has been completed.
With so much unrest in the streets and such fierce opposition, Macron’s second term – this time without an absolute majority in parliament – just won’t get off the ground. It bodes ill for his promise to modernize France.
Also read this analysis: French government gives itself 100 days to restore peace
The violence also overshadows international action. French ministers have had to cancel non-urgent trips due to the protests. When asked on Friday, a German government spokesman said that people in Berlin “of course look with care at what is happening in France”.
As far as is known, Macron will leave for Berlin for three days on Sunday, for the first state visit by a French president in 23 years. In March, a state visit by Britain’s King Charles to France was postponed at the last minute due to French pension protests.