The yield on France’s benchmark 10-year government bond passed 5% on Wednesday, its highest since 2002, as the government admitted it had lost control of Saturday’s streets and braced for the next round of protests. The cost-of-living unrest that began as largely peaceful demonstrations has already produced a burned and partly destroyed town hall in Limoges, looted shopping districts in Paris, and 2,500 people taken into custody. Six months before the election to choose Emmanuel Macron’s successor, the violence has also become raw material for other people’s campaigns — which is what pushed the French president to answer back.
Speaking to reporters in Doha during a visit to Qatar, Macron accused foreign politicians of exploiting the unrest, Jon Henley reported in The Guardian. He named no one, then named them by implication. The “manipulation of information” after Saturday’s riots had produced “comments that are as unacceptable as they are stupid, from many people, including foreign leaders,” he said. Asked if he meant Donald Trump, he answered: “Among others.” Trump, campaigning for Republicans ahead of the US midterm elections, has blamed France’s violence on “migrants, jihadists and communists” — the argument, as Al Jazeera put it, that migrants and open-border policies are responsible.
Macron said leaders “in the middle of election campaigns, whether here in the region or on the other side of the Atlantic” were “naively spreading narratives that certain circles are clearly trying to promote.” They were “using our country for their own political campaigns,” he said. “And we don’t need that. We already have difficulties to deal with.” He added that AI-generated images were circulating “depicting scenes that never actually happened in France. We’ve had people claiming that we were invaded by hordes of migrants and Islamists, which is completely false.” Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces elections next weekend, has separately described an “invasion of extremist Islam” hitting France. Analysts quoted in the coverage have dismissed the claim that migrants were the main driver of the protests.
The state’s numbers
Saturday’s demonstrations over the cost of living turned into widespread violence and looting, centred on Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Limoges, where the town hall was set on fire. The government admitted it “lost control” of the day. Justice minister Gérald Darmanin gave the enforcement tally on Wednesday: of 2,500 people taken into custody during and after the protests, 917 have been formally prosecuted and 174 jailed. That is a 7% jailing rate against detentions, or 19% against prosecutions — most of the caseload is still unresolved.
Paris police banned protests in much of the city on Thursday from 8am to 8pm, covering the Elysée palace, both houses of parliament, the Louvre, the Champs-Elysées, the Bastille and République squares, and the Châtelet-Les Halles shopping area that was heavily targeted by looters. Ministers have promised a “massive” reinforced security operation for the coming weekend, with some troops expected alongside police after the acknowledged failures of the initial response. Partial night-time curfews in Paris, Marseille, Lille and other cities on Monday and Tuesday brought relative calm and were expected to be renewed Wednesday.
Saturday, and after
The next test has a date and a route. The gilets jaunes movement — the grassroots campaign that first rose in 2018 against fuel costs and spending cuts — has formally filed plans for a march through central Paris on Saturday, aiming to revive that campaign. Student groups have called protests the same day over education funding. Macron, who was in the Gulf seeking energy deals to offset rising fuel costs, said: “Those who want to cause disorder in city centres next Saturday will be prevented from doing so. There must be no wavering at the top of the state.” He insisted France “doesn’t need a state of emergency” and “has the means” to control further unrest.
The unions are keeping their distance from the street calendar: France’s main trade unions have called a nationwide mobilisation for November 5 rather than this weekend. “There is huge and legitimate anger, and the answer to that situation is not repression. It is a political response,” said Sophie Binet, head of the CGT union. Union representatives met prime minister Sébastien Lecornu on Wednesday; no concrete announcements followed.
The contagion the markets are pricing is not only French. Several countries have issued travel warnings for France. Sometimes violent protests have also hit Italy — where the government has ordered 500 troops to Milan — and Belgium, against a backdrop of governments across the continent, France included, struggling with budgets. The arithmetic hanging over Saturday is the spread between the state’s displayed capacity and last weekend’s: the 10-year yield above 5% for the first time in 24 years is the market’s running estimate of which side wins.