Euronews reviews France’s leading newspapers after a weekend of unrest, with protests over student living conditions turning violent and riots and looting reported in major cities.
Libération: Police fiasco
In its Monday 19 October edition, Libération questions the authorities’ handling of the demonstrations, noting that turnout far exceeded expectations.
“There were five times more of them than the 150,000 demonstrators anticipated by Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez,” the newspaper writes.
It asks whether the government and security forces took the calls for demonstrations seriously enough, describing the events as “the anatomy of a fiasco”.
The paper draws on the analysis of Sébastian Roché, a sociologist specialising in policing practices, who describes how police tactics contributed to the disorder.
“It was barely 12.20 pm on Place de la République in Paris when the tear gas began to spread across the sky, accompanied by deafening grenade blasts,” he says, nearly two hours before the march was due to begin.
Similar scenes unfolded in Marseille and Bordeaux, where gatherings descended into chaos within minutes. Clashes also broke out in Clermont-Ferrand.
Roché argues that police operations split up the marches, scattering demonstrators and making it harder for officers to maintain control — a strategy he says contributed to the damage.
Le Figaro: A scathing editorial
In his Monday editorial, Le Figaro deputy editor-in-chief Vincent Trémolet de Villers condemns what he describes as “a state humiliated in its town halls, its préfectures and its police stations”.
Trémolet de Villers, also a commentator on Europe 1, owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré, criticises the judicial system, which he portrays as “indulgent towards criminals but merciless towards law-abiding citizens”.
He also attacks what he calls “far-left militias”, “uncontrolled immigration” and the “various forms of socialism that have governed us for the past fifteen years”.
In particularly sharp terms, he targets supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, calling them “useful idiots” who “not only wear the keffiyeh but also the tie”. He also denounces what he describes as a “technocratic monarchy, drunk on its own power”.
Le Monde: Organised ultra-left
Le Monde examines the ultra-left, a movement singled out by several political leaders following the unrest.
The newspaper traces its roots to political currents that emerged to the left of communist parties in the 20th century, including council communism, which advocates the direct organisation of workers into councils and rejects political parties.
Historian Sylvain Boulouque, a specialist in anarchism and the far left, explains that the ultra-left originally referred to groups that rejected the French Communist Party’s political model, parliamentary politics and elections.
The article describes a movement whose actions can follow “a logic of confrontation with the symbols of the state, capitalism or authority”.
Historian Gilles Candar, a specialist in the French left, cautions that the term “ultra-left” carries a connotation of excess and is now often used polemically.
He argues that some political leaders’ tendency to equate the ultra-left with the ultra-right creates what he calls a “regrettable and harmful false symmetry”.