Macron Refuses to Accept Interior Minister’s Resignation as Riots Shake France

French President Emmanuel Macron has declined Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez’s offer to resign, which came after a weekend of rioting in several cities, the presidential office said on Monday.

Nuñez said the police made more than 2,000 arrests across France, and at least 600 officers were injured during clashes, which began after a nationwide march on Saturday organized to protest the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools. One protester died after suffering a cardiac arrest in Paris.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on Monday that there had been further violence in Paris and Marseille on Sunday night, and said that far-left groups involved in the riots were threatening the country’s democratic process. [Lecornu statement, on BBC, not yet on the wires, delete]

“There’s a movement led by very ultra-left radical groups that really want to destabilize, that want to create chaos in our country up until the presidential elections,” Lecornu said.

“We will not be dictated and ruled by the breakers, by the thieves, by the thugs.”

Lecornu’s remarks were echoed by Macron, who made a televised speech on Sunday night.

“Those who destroyed must pay, those who looted must repay, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will have to answer for it,” Macron said.

Speaking of “a moment of extreme gravity,” Macron blamed the destruction on “seditious elements from ultra-left splinter groups, joined by many criminals,” and singled out the burning of the 19th-century City Hall in the city of Limoges in central France.

Macron chaired a crisis meeting on Sunday with Nuñez, Lecornu, and other ministers, and said the interior minister should stay on to ensure the chain of command is maintained.

He tasked Nuñez with new strategies “to put an end to the barricades and ​looting,” and asked him to “ensure transparency regarding the failures in foresight and intelligence that led to the violence.”

“The French people want to know how the disorder came about, how it all unfolded, and how this violence came about in our country,” Lecornu said on Monday.

Macron Touring Gulf States

The French president went ahead with a trip to the Middle East, arriving in Kuwait on Monday morning. He is due to visit the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar before returning to France on Wednesday.

The president’s office said Macron was due to discuss the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and its impact on oil prices with leaders of the Gulf states.

Saturday’s march came after weeks of demonstrations by high school students protesting teacher shortages and poor-quality school buildings in suburbs with large immigrant populations, including descendants of immigrants from former French colonies in Africa.

The protest, organized by left-wing groups, was against rising prices and government spending cuts, and calls went around online to revive the Yellow Vest movement of 2018, which protested the high cost of living.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a Fox News video of the riots on Truth Social.

“France is burning!” Trump wrote in an earlier post.

“The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!”

But on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X in support of the rioters and accused Macron of paying the price for supporting Trump during the conflict with Iran.

“The French people demand wholesale change, including freedom of assembly,” Araghchi wrote. “Listen to the future of France, Mr. President.”

Le Pen Waiting in the Wings

Macron is due to step down as president in the spring, and an opinion poll published on Oct. 14 suggested Marine Le Pen, the candidate of conservative party National Rally, is at 38 percent, far ahead of her nearest rival, progressive politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Le Pen said in a video address at the weekend that France was living through “a profound crisis of confidence, of authority” under “a Macronist power that is out of breath, exhausted, disoriented,” and she tied the “forces of destruction” to Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party and Antifa groups.

The Interior Ministry said 550,000 took part in Saturday’s march, but one of the organizers, the General Confederation of Labour trade union, said 800,000 had taken part.

Police said that 110,000 people peacefully marched in Paris on Saturday, while several thousand others participated in the rioting.

“Entire streets were methodically ravaged,” Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire told reporters.

When the march broke up, small groups dressed in black pried open shop shutters between République and Bastille, and others went in behind them to loot.

The mayor of Limoges, Guillaume Guérin, told reporters on Sunday that about 700 hooded, “overtrained, armed” far-left militants had infiltrated a march of 5,000, and that police holding them on the boulevards “had no more ammunition” by 3:30 p.m.

There were further clashes between police and rioters in Paris and Marseille on Sunday.

On Sunday, a business owner, who gave only his first name, Yoni, spoke to The Epoch Times while clearing up his damaged marble showroom in downtown Paris.

“We expected this kind of thing and had done everything we could to protect the shop,” Yoni said. “But here there was nothing to steal, only things to break.”

A marble table worth 25,000 euros ($28,000) lay in pieces.

Reuters contributed to this report.