PARIS: France's prime minister called for partial curfews Monday as protesters blocked the entrance to the Louvre in Paris and authorities scrambled to stem public discontent fuelling cost-of-living demonstrations that over the weekend spilled over into some of the worst street violence in recent years.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu did not rule out imposing a state of emergency after the interior minister said the police "had lost control" during the weekend's unrest, which has flared six months before France elects a successor to President Emmanuel Macron.
With organisers calling for a new round of protests next Saturday, Lecornu called for regional authorities to impose "partial" curfews to protect businesses and people after hundreds of shops were damaged and looted.
"I'm absolutely determined to restore public order", he said, adding that the government was ready to impose a state of emergency "if needed."
Other European countries, where anger over rising prices has also led to protests, were keeping a nervous eye on the developments, with smaller clashes breaking out in Milan, Italy's financial capital, and Belgium over the weekend and protests simmering in Spain and Portugal.
Some half a million people turned out across France on Saturday to denounce the surging cost of living, a culmination of four weeks of protests that began with high school students demanding better conditions at their schools.
What started as peaceful demonstrations morphed into violence in some places, as masked groups on the sidelines of the protests attacked law enforcement, broke into town halls and other public buildings, setting many of them ablaze, looted shops, and set fire to cars, bicycles and scooters on the streets.
More than 2,500 people were arrested and nearly 1,000 members of the security forces injured. Protesters were also hurt, with one demonstrator's hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade.
"On Saturday, in some major cities, you couldn't look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn't lost control," Nunez said.
[[nid:1559268]]
He said "a number of measures" aimed at containing and preventing looters and vandals would be implemented "starting this evening", including boosting police on the streets.
Macron acknowledged failures in the government response, despite the deployment of some 60,000 law enforcement personnel across the country on Saturday.
Nationwide, more than 2,330 people were taken into police custody over the weekend, 70 percent of whom were adults – and many of whom were already known to authorities, said Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
At least 3,000 businesses were affected by the unrest, according to Trade and Small Businesses Minister Serge Papin, with damage running into hundreds of millions of euros.
In an address to the nation Sunday, Macron slammed the "unbridled" violence and said local authorities would be able to ban some rallies, but stopped short of imposing more drastic measures.
City authorities in the southern port city of Marseille said they had banned public gatherings from noon to 8pm (1000-1800 GMT).
The European Union slammed the weekend violence as "unacceptable" but warned that the right to peaceful protest "must be protected" in France.
Germany condemned the violence and updated its travel advice for France, saying "further demonstrations and, in some cases, further outbreaks of violence in the coming days cannot be ruled out."
The United Kingdom said the right to protest "can never excuse violence."
In Paris on Monday, about a dozen demonstrators blocked the entrance to the iconic Louvre Museum, the most visited in the world, while puzzled tourists looked on.
"We don't want to get involved. We want to stand back and get away from them," Pat Boland, a tourist from Australia, said of the protests.
"But we don't want to go against them either," his wife Anne added.
[[nid:1559267]]
The two pensioners, both 73, spoke to AFP outside barricades that had been erected at the Louvre, which had closed as a small group of protesters occupied an area outside its famed glass pyramid entrance.
Rising prices have fuelled anger in France, where diesel prices have jumped nearly 40 per cent and petrol by 25 per cent since March, and where food prices have risen by 25 per cent over the past five years.
The unrest has flared just months before presidential elections that will see a new French president elected after a decade of centrist Macron and with Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate for the National Rally party, riding high in the polls.
Ministers and Le Pen have accused ultra-left groups of stoking the violence to boost the chances of the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon in the presidential polls.
On Monday, Lecornu blamed the "ultra-left movement" for seeking to "orchestrate deep unrest across the country."
"There is a whole network that could be mobilised to even call into question the timetable for the presidential election and the holding of the presidential election itself," Lecornu told reporters.
Melenchon said he was "astonished" at the remarks and said he had "not heard anyone talk about that."
During the weekend, clashes broke out on the sidelines of a cost-of-living demonstration in Milan.
"I'm very worried because it's a new phenomenon, which also originates from an international scenario and therefore feeds itself," Mayor Giuseppe Sala said.
In Belgium, police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters in Brussels and Liege.
In Spain protesters have set up tents in the heart of Madrid to denounce soaring housing costs, with similar encampments going up in neighbouring Portugal's main cities of Lisbon and Porto.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd