France’s government is preparing aid for damaged shops and has asked local officials to impose limited curfews after Oct. 17 protest violence, while President Emmanuel Macron has kept Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez in office.
Commerce Minister Serge Papin said a provisional estimate suggested at least 3,000 shops may have been damaged or looted. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said ministers were preparing a support fund and discussing faster insurance assessments and advance payments. The measures are intended to address merchants’ cash needs, help shops reopen and protect jobs.
Nuñez confirmed in a France Inter interview that he had offered to resign and Macron had refused. He acknowledged that police lost control in some cities during the demonstrations. At an Oct. 19 crisis briefing, Lecornu said the interior minister retained his confidence.
Lecornu said he had asked prefects to introduce partial curfews in affected areas starting the evening of Oct. 19. He ruled out a curfew covering all of Paris. Nuñez said more police officers and gendarmes would be deployed, especially over the coming weekend.
The planned assistance builds on Macron’s earlier promise to help merchants affected by the unrest. In his Oct. 18 address, Macron also said people who damaged property should pay for it and those who looted should reimburse what they took. A Sept. 16 Élysée account described an existing 2019 mechanism for recovering damage costs from perpetrators and a proposal to expand civil liability after limited recoveries.
Macron put attendance at the Oct. 17 demonstrations in the hundreds of thousands and identified living costs and fuel prices as protesters’ concerns. He addressed students’ worries about living and study conditions separately, describing a movement that had developed over several weeks. He said Lecornu would meet students, educators, unions, employers and local officials during the week of Oct. 19.
Lecornu said unions had given notice of a Nov. 5 demonstration and that he would discuss security arrangements for future protests with them.
