Macron opts for gradual response to riots after death of Nahel M.
President Emmanuel Macron has tried to temper the
violent protests in France with a heavy police presence and cautious language.
He has resisted implementing a state of emergency, as called for by the right
and far right.
By Ivanne
Trippenbach
Published
today at 2:30 pm (Paris)
The fire is
still smoldering, but the violence has somewhat subsided after four nights of
rioting. Fires and fireworks, on a smaller scale, still agitated many towns in
the Paris region, as well as cities such as Lyon and Marseille, on the night of
Friday, June 30. Was Emmanuel Macron heard? Four days after the death of
17-year-old Nahel M., shot at point-blank range by a police officer, the French
president issued a stern warning and vastly deployed law enforcement officers
to break the nightmarish spiral. "The gamble is to show every muscle so as
not to have to use them," said a senior official at the Interior Ministry.
On Friday
morning, Macron signaled he was open to every option, "with no
taboo." He left the European Council summit in Brussels early, skipping
the final press conference he usually attends. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne
postponed her planned announcements regarding measures for working-class
neighborhoods and joined him at the Interior Ministry for a crisis meeting with
key government ministers.
Without delay,
Eric Ciotti, the head of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, and Eric
Zemmour, the founder of the far-right movement Reconquête! party, called for a
state of emergency to be implemented, based on a 1955 law passed during the
Algerian War. Behind closed doors, Macron withstood the pressure, weighing up
the consequences. Several ministers were skeptical of triggering the
exceptional procedure, as had been done after 12 nights of rioting in 2005. It
would be an "admission of failure," said Cities and Housing Minister
Olivier Klein on France Inter radio. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin added
that such a decision would have to be backed up with the capacity to strictly
enforce the rules.
Macron gave himself another 24-48 hours to deal with the disorder caused by very young teenagers – a third of the 900 people arrested on Thursday night were aged 14-18. (…
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