French police have banned protests in parts of Paris on Thursday, days after street rallies degenerated into some of the worst unrest the country has seen in years — and President Emmanuel Macron has accused foreign leaders, widely understood to include US President Donald Trump, of exploiting the violence for their own political campaigns. The ban, running from 8:00am to 8:00pm (0600 to 1800 GMT), covers the Elysee presidential palace, both houses of parliament, the Louvre museum, the Champs-Elysees, the Bastille and Republique squares, and the Chatelet-Les Halles shopping area, which was heavily targeted by looters over the weekend.
A weekend of violence France admits it could not control
France's government has admitted it "lost control" in the frenzy of street violence that erupted over the weekend, when masked youths clashed with police, looted shops and vandalised public buildings. More than 2,000 people were arrested across the country as the demonstrations spread from Paris to cities including Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse. The unrest grew out of weeks of student protests against teacher shortages and deteriorating classrooms, broadening into a wider movement against the high cost of living, rising fuel prices and falling purchasing power, with labour unions joining the call for better wages and pensions. Police used tear gas and stun grenades in some confrontations, and the violence has damaged France's image abroad and rattled financial markets roughly six months before presidential elections. India has issued a travel advisory urging its nationals to avoid crowded places in France.
Macron's rebuke from Doha
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Qatar, Macron implied that Trump, and possibly Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also fighting an election campaign, had made "stupid" and "unacceptable" comments on the unrest for political gain, though he did not name either leader. "There are people who campaign at France's expense — leaders who are in campaign mode, whether here in the region or on the other side of the Atlantic," Macron said in Doha. According to reporting from the region, he also accused some leaders of credulously repeating AI-generated content and dismissed the idea of foreign interference in France's domestic crisis.
Trump's rhetoric and Le Pen's counterattack
Trump has sought to link the unrest to "migrants, jihadists, and communists" while campaigning for his Republican party ahead of the November 3 US midterm elections. On his Truth Social platform he wrote "France is burning!", blaming immigration from "an entirely different world" and urging Paris to close its borders. He also hailed French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who shares his hard-line positions on immigration. Le Pen, for her part, branded Macron's remarks "conspiratorial" on X, writing: "The images we saw last Saturday are not generated by artificial intelligence: they show the sad reality of what France has become after 10 years of Macronist rule." Her National Rally has accused Macron's government of being the "party of chaos," while Macron has blamed "agitators from ultra-left fringe groups" and delinquents for the violence.
The episode leaves France caught between street anger over living conditions, a leadership struggle six months out from a presidential vote, and an increasingly loud transatlantic argument over what the burning cars and smashed shopfronts actually mean — a question Paris has yet to answer.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Movement Proposition (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0