President Emmanuel Macron will meet with the mayors of hundreds of towns to assess the impact of the riots that have rocked France over the last week as a massive police deployment led to a continued drop in the level of unrest overnight.
French employers’ lobby Medef estimated the cost of violence since the police shooting of Nahel, a 17-year-old of North African descent, last Tuesday at more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), with 200 businesses looted, and 300 bank branches and 250 tobacco stores destroyed.
“The videos of the riots that circulated around the world hurt the image of France,” Medef head Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux told Le Parisien newspaper. “It’s always difficult to say if the impact will be long lasting, but there will certainly be a drop in reservations this summer, although the season had seemed promising. Many have already been canceled.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was due to speak early on Tuesday with a Citroen car dealer whose lot was ransacked and other store owners in a town south of Paris to discuss the fallout from the crisis.
The number of arrests continued to fall — dropping to 72 from a peak of more than 1,300 on Friday — as authorities maintained a deployment of 45,000 police and other forces across the country for a fourth night.
The number of vehicles burned or buildings damaged has dropped each night since peaking on Thursday, government data show. All told, more than 3,000 people have been arrested since unrest began a week ago.
In addition to going after official buildings, one attack in particular brought widespread condemnation — the ramming of a burning car into the home of the mayor of L’Hay-les-Roses, a Paris suburb. His wife and two young children escaped the house through a back door.
Macron, who met with police and fire fighters overnight in a show of support, will meet with the mayors of about 220 towns hit by violence later on Tuesday to discuss the situation.
The unrest is another political minefield for the French president after he pushed through an increase in France’s retirement age this year that was preceded by months of strikes and protests. Images of riot police once again battling in the streets further tarnish the country’s reputation, potentially adding to the economic toll just as the government faces pressure to speed up debt reduction.
The French opposition at both ends of the political spectrum has seized on the crisis as evidence that the government is failing to ensure public safety and narrow economic disparity.
Labor unrest and street demonstrations happen regularly in France but have taken on a more intense and confrontational tone in recent years, reflecting divisions within French society. Before the pension protests and the pandemic, the so-called Yellow Vest movement caused widespread property damage.
Nahel, whose last name has officially been withheld by authorities, was buried Saturday in Nanterre, his hometown where he was shot at close range in a car. The officer who fired the gun has been charged with murder and is in pre-trial detention. Laurent-Franck Lienard, a lawyer for the officer, told Europe 1 radio that the policeman believed he needed to shoot.
--With assistance from William Horobin.
