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PARIS — France is slowly catching its breath after days of large-scale urban unrest but a greater challenge looms for President Emmanuel Macron: How to tackle the root problems the riots have exposed.
Macron has walked a thin line between showing empathy and sending out a message of toughness after a police officer shot and killed teenager Nahel M. last week, leading to days of riots. He flooded the streets with police officers in an effort to contain the violence.
This weekend there were fewer arrests than on previous nights and the unrest appears to be waning, at least temporarily.
But the series of incidents have fanned the flames around police brutality and the treatment of racial minorities into a broader, violent rejection of French institutions.
Overnight on Saturday, attackers rammed a car into the house of the local mayor in L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a suburb south of Paris, injuring the official’s wife as she tried to flee with her young children.
Elsewhere in France, the violence triggered by the teenager’s death has targeted many symbols of the French Republic: schools, police stations, libraries and other public buildings.
“An unprecedented movement has hit territories that were not previously affected [by violence]. Public buildings were damaged which was not the case during the last wave of protests in 2005,” said a French government official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues more openly, referring to an outbreak of violence that rocked France’s banlieues for weeks in 2005.
Over the past few days, Macron has sought to strike a delicate balance between showing compassion and resolve. He has described the shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M. as he was fleeing the police last week as “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.” But Macron has slammed the riots as “the unacceptable manipulation of a death of a teenager,” as well.
On Tuesday, he is expected to meet mayors from more than 200 towns and cities hit by violence. The aim of the meeting is to gather first-hand accounts from local officials, work on solutions and relay that the government is backing local officials.
“The president wants to listen,” the French official said.
After cutting short his visit to a European summit last week, Macron tried to show he is at the helm of the country, regularly calling crisis cabinet meetings, and issuing orders to his prime minister and ministers. On Saturday, he called off a long-planned state visit to Germany.
Permanently in crisis mode
The roster of meetings at the Elysée Palace is a familiar sight and a sign that the government is in crisis mode — once again.
The French president has barely emerged from a deep political crisis over pension reforms this spring and his government now is faced with more turmoil. Macron’s first term was equally rocky, as he faced Yellow Jackets protests, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ever-present threat of terrorism in France.
Macron has accumulated “difficult, painful crisis situations” that have “perplexed” the outside world, said Bruno Cautrès, a politics researcher with the Sciences Po institute.
“It’s as if France was a pressure cooker, [each crisis] reveals tensions, a conflict in society, tensions over the respect owed to our institutions … Our country is constantly invoking Republican values, but it appears entire segments of the population don’t feel this matters to them,” he said.
The outpouring of shock and anger over the death of Nahel M., who was of North African descent, has also forced many in France to do some soul-searching over issues of discrimination, integration, and crime in immigrant-heavy suburbs around French cities.
Public pressure to more closely examine French policing practices and allegations of racism in the security forces beyond re-examining rules of engagement is mounting. In 2017, for example, police officers were given the right to shoot in several hypothetical scenarios, including when a driver refuses to stop and is deemed a risk to life.
Beyond alleged discrimination by the police, fixing the growing rift between the suburbs’ disadvantaged youth and French institutions will likely require more money for policies aimed at addressing root causes and reducing social inequalities in areas such as education and social housing.
But addressing issues in the banlieues is difficult at a time when the government is attempting to reduce spending. After resisting calls to back down in the face of peaceful protests over his flagship pensions reforms, Macron reaching for the checkbook shortly after the recent days’ protests might be seen as rewarding rioters.
The need to reconcile the country and embody law and order at a time when his margins for maneuver are limited after losing a parliamentary majority last year is no small task for Macron.
He will have to keep a sharp eye on opposition parties as crime, identity and immigration — long issues the far-right has campaigned on — take center stage. If far-right leader Marine Le Pen has held back from fueling a backlash against rioters, sticking to her strategy of embracing mainstream politics, her trusted lieutenant Jordan Bardella has led the charge against “criminals” who owe “everything to the Republic.”
The recent unrest had exposed “frailties” that could “encourage a populist discourse,” the same government official admitted.
“[Our] political response must be a reasonable one, that addresses the reality and daily lives of the French,” he added. That’s easier said than done.
