Interior Minister Laurent Nunez admitted on Monday that French authorities had “lost control” and failed to anticipate the scale of the violence sweeping the country. Three days later, restrictions are in force in Paris. Police have banned protests near the Elysee presidential palace, Bastille Square, both houses of parliament, and tourist areas including the Louvre and the Champs-Elysees. On Thursday, October 22, 2026, a curfew runs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time.
Student demonstrations over conditions, high prices and education reform started the unrest. Then it escalated. Masked rioters looted shops and clashed with police. France saw protests, demonstrations and violence across the country last week, while temporary curfews were enforced and repeat demonstrations planned for this weekend. Trade unions have called a general strike for November 5. Authorities have had two relatively quiet nights, but politicians are using images of burning cars, broken shop windows and ransacked buildings to pressure the government.
The Police Fight Back
The national police union Alliance announced a liability claim against the French state over its handling of the violence. Alliance representative Stanislas Goudon blamed a “20 year lack of political courage” by successive governments on security policy, saying it contributed to last weekend’s security failures.
The claim accuses the state of creating conditions that led to violence and endangered lives, including police officers’ lives. It cites “competing orders”, deprivation from use of intermediate weapons, and a “lack of training for teams” responsible for maintaining public order. Police had warned that they lacked resources and weren’t prepared for further unrest. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has now pledged a “massive” security deployment for the large-scale protests expected in Paris over the weekend.
The sequence matters. Officers warned of shortages. Their warnings went unheeded. The interior minister has since conceded that the state lost control.
A Row Over the Facts
The political fight has gone international. US President Donald Trump blamed “migrants, jihadists, and communists” for the unrest, saying they had “conquered, looted, and burned (France) to the ground.” While campaigning for the US midterms, he said he had warned Macron about immigration, but the French president refused to close the borders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke earlier in the week of an “invasion of extremist Islam.”
Macron hit back during a visit to Qatar on Wednesday. “There are people who campaign at France's expense,” he told reporters, adding that those leaders were “in campaign mode, whether here in the region or on the other side of the Atlantic.” Asked if he meant Trump, he replied: “Among others.” He said people had manipulated information about the crisis, including with “AI-generated images depicting scenes that never actually happened,” and rejected claims that France was “invaded by hordes of migrants and Islamists” as “completely false.”
Marine Le Pen called his account “conspiratorial.” “The images we saw last Saturday aren’t generated by artificial intelligence,” she said. “They show the sad reality of what France has become after 10 years of Macronist rule.” Le Pen is described as the favourite to win the 2027 presidential election, followed by far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.
A President Abroad
Macron also faces criticism over a Gulf tour, where he sought oil and diesel supplies amid rising fuel prices and unrest at home. French Socialist MEP Jean-Marc Germain discussed the deepening political crisis, Macron's increasingly isolated position and the possible consequences for the European Union.
Why This Matters:
The French state's first duty is public order, and its own interior minister says it failed. When a national police union sues its employer over training, equipment and conflicting orders, the problem is institutional, not rhetorical. For the EU, the stakes are concrete. France is a founding member and a pillar of the bloc, and a government that can't secure its capital while trailing the opposition ahead of 2027 weakens the Union's credibility on security. Voters notice who seems in control and who doesn't. Whatever the dispute over causes, the political reality is that trust in the state's ability to keep order is the issue, and the November 5 general strike will test that trust again.
- france protests
- emmanuel macron
- french police
- paris
- police union
- curfew
- marine le pen
- public disorder