France has named the cities for tonight's riot curfews: Paris, Lyon and Nice. Paris police are putting a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. tonight on Place de la République and the Les Halles area — the square where rioting broke out Saturday and the shopping district that was looted. Lyon has an overnight curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. on part of its city centre, and Nice has a 9 p.m. curfew for minors downtown. France has also partly banned protests tonight — gatherings and demonstrations are banned from 8 p.m. in the Paris zones and around the Élysée, the National Assembly and the main train stations — and crowds are already gathering again in central Paris.
The orders came after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu asked prefects and municipalities on Monday to impose “partial and localised” curfews from this evening in the areas hit by the weekend rioting. A full Paris curfew is “out of the question,” he said, and a state of emergency is held in reserve but not ruled out. Paris police said the curfew aims to protect “people and property from the violence and looting.” In the north, Lille, Douai, Wattignies and Denain are under curfews for minors from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — Denain's runs through October 25 — and Marseille banned all gatherings from midday to 8 p.m. on Monday. Protesters also blocked access to the Louvre on Monday, forcing the museum to close.
“Despite scenes of severe violence and extensive property damage, no one was killed, and that is a miracle.”
Lecornu defended the police handling of a weekend that saw France's worst rioting in years: city halls targeted — the 19th-century city hall in Limoges was set ablaze and its roof collapsed — at least 3,000 businesses damaged or looted, and at least 2,400 people arrested across the country. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, whose resignation President Macron refused on Monday, admitted authorities had “lost control” in some major cities on Saturday and blamed the violence on “hordes of troublemakers and looters” and “far-left activists,” conceding that police strategy must adapt “in the face of extremely mobile groups.”
The government's critics are not waiting for tonight's test. Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, said flatly: “The government has failed, the head of state has failed in his essential duty of protecting the French people.” Big-city mayors demanded answers on Monday over how a state that deployed 60,000 officers still lost control in places, while the marchers themselves were overwhelmingly peaceful cost-of-living protesters. Tonight decides which account holds: if the curfew zones stay quiet, Lecornu's calibration looks like control; if they burn, the state of emergency he kept in reserve becomes Tuesday's headline.
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