Around 350 people were detained across the French capital between Sunday night and the early hours of Monday, as unrest spread through the country — figures that authorities confirmed following a call for calm from the president.
Over the weekend, gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people calling for relief from rising living costs and restored education funding gave way in some locations to confrontations with officers, fires, and instances of looting. That Saturday in Créteil — at a secondary school on the outskirts of Paris where students had spent weeks protesting overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating facilities — two separate groups of demonstrators, the Yellow Vest movement and those students, converged on the same march, after which confrontations broke out.
Trade unions have joined a movement that started with more specific complaints, with wider public discontent over the gap between wealthy and lower-income households — and the mounting expense of everyday necessities — now channelled toward the administration's proposed 2027 budget and its accompanying spending cuts.
Unrest persisted across Paris for a second consecutive day, even as Macron had called on residents on Friday to maintain calm and show respect for one another. Near the Place de la République area on Sunday, vehicles and rubbish bins were set alight as groups of protesters and police came into direct contact, with a number of shop fronts forced open and officers deploying tear gas and water cannons in response. Video captured burn-marked debris, storefronts with their windows blown out, advertising boards torn apart, and walls bearing spray-painted markings across multiple properties.
People at the protest confronted a journalist who was recording the event on camera. Footage of the incident was recorded by the camera operator before the team moved away from the scene and continued their broadcast work.
Storefronts along a stretch of upmarket shopping streets in the capital were forced open and stock removed by people passing through the area the previous day. Grégoire, the Paris deputy mayor, told reporters that entire streets had been stripped of their shopfronts and outer facades in what he characterised as a methodical pattern, while unrelated disturbances in Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, Angers, and Limoges left a range of businesses and public buildings with damage.
Estimates of the disruption to commerce came from Alain Di Crescenzo, head of the CCI France chamber of commerce network, who put the number of affected businesses above 2,000 and pegged financial losses at what he described as running into the hundreds of millions of euros. On the question of how many people took part, official tallies and organiser figures diverged considerably, with Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin recording 550,000 participants across the country — including 110,000 in Paris — while the CGT and its allied trade unions, together with student organisations, placed the overall total nearer to 800,000.
Speaking to a prominent television outlet that Monday, Darmanin put the weekend's total number of people taken into custody at upwards of 2,330, with roughly 855 of those arrests occurring within the capital. Figures from the period put the number of law enforcement personnel — officers and gendarmes combined — who sustained injuries at close to a thousand.
By early Monday, tensions at the Louvre Museum had subsided enough for the venue to open, though students and trade union members positioned themselves at its entrances to register objections over what they characterised as disproportionate use of force by police. Footage that spread across social media then showed a group of those demonstrators making their way inside past security and congregating near the glass pyramid, prompting officials to close the museum for a period.
Lawmakers spanning the breadth of France's political landscape directed responsibility for the unrest at Macron and his administration, pointing to what they described as the erosion of public services and a breakdown in order. Le Pen, who holds a lead in first-round polling ahead of the 2027 presidential contest, told supporters that Macron had lost both credibility and authority, and that his administration was nearing its end. Separately, Mélenchon, whose France Insoumise party sits on the left of the political spectrum, attributed what he characterised as a decade of deterioration in public services to policies pursued under Macron.
Three municipal leaders — representing Paris, Marseille, and Limoges — levelled formal complaints against Interior Minister Laurent Nunez and senior police commanders over what they described as a failure to adequately manage public order. Nunez, speaking to reporters on Monday, initially attributed the unrest to outside actors he said had taken advantage of the situation, then pointed to a lack of preparation as the reason officers were unable to keep order.
Macron turned down the resignation put forward on Sunday, directing instead that policing methods be overhauled, deployment timelines shortened, and a fuller account of intelligence shortcomings made available. Partial curfews across a number of cities were put in place under orders from Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu.
Addressing the unrest directly, Macron stated that acts of destruction and theft would carry consequences, and that violence had no legitimate place in how grievances were expressed. Speaking on television that Sunday, he told viewers that no justification existed for the damage while also committing to take up students' grievances about conditions at their schools. In the six months before a presidential vote, he characterised the unrest as a coordinated effort by political adversaries to interfere with the electoral process.
Macron departed Monday on a three-day Middle East visit, leaving his administration to manage the political pressures at home.
Macron's approval numbers have fallen to their lowest recorded point, a backdrop against which the current turmoil is unfolding. Polling conducted by Ipsos BVA-CESI for La Tribune Dimanche in October placed his approval rating at 15 per cent, while 82 per cent of respondents viewed him unfavourably — a combined result that marked the weakest public standing of his presidency since it began in 2017. Polling conducted by Ifop placed approval at 17 per cent, with the remaining 83 per cent of respondents expressing disapproval.
Polling ahead of the April 2027 vote places Le Pen at the front of the field in the opening round, with survey figures ranging between 32 and 36 per cent.
Demonstrations drawing tens of thousands of people unfolded at multiple points across Europe over the weekend, with participants citing affordability pressures, a shortage of available housing, and dissatisfaction with government policies — conditions that extended well beyond France's borders. Protests across multiple nations grew into confrontations that included property damage and fires.
Protests over tuition fee increases and proposed policy changes that demonstrators argue would limit access to university unfolded across Belgium. Demonstrations over the cost of living and ongoing armed conflicts drew tense scenes in both Milan and Bologna. Crowds numbering in the tens of thousands gathered across Portugal to voice frustration over stagnant pay, unaffordable rents, and a deepening shortage of available housing. Protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama — centred on grievances over corruption, a scarcity of jobs, and a lack of opportunity for young people — entered their fifth straight day.
Kurz, who once held the chancellorship in Austria, described weekend disturbances across Europe in an online post as resembling scenes from a civil war, and went on to suggest that Berlin, Vienna, and Munich could find themselves in a similar position in the near term. In a separate appearance before reporters on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov characterised the same events as a situation he described as nearing a state of disorder, though he stopped short of drawing conclusions about whether the underlying causes were structural in nature, while noting that the overall scale was considerable.
