France’s interior ministry has published figures showing foreign nationals made up 87 per cent of suspects in thefts without violence on public transport in the Paris region in 2025.
Across all thefts on the Île-de-France network, which covers Paris and its seven surrounding departments, the proportion stood at 80 per cent. Foreigners also accounted for 60 per cent of suspects in violent thefts, 61 per cent in sexual violence cases and 38 per cent in physical assaults.
The data were released on September 10 by the Ministerial Statistical Service for Internal Security (SSMSI), the ministry’s crime statistics office.
Nationwide, non-French nationals made up 71 per cent of theft suspects on public transport, 41 per cent of those implicated in sexual violence and 26 per cent of assault suspects. Foreigners represent about 9 per cent of France’s population, according to national statistics institute INSEE.
Nationals of Maghreb countries topped the breakdown, accounting for 40 per cent of all theft suspects on public transport across France, Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) reported. They also made up 14 per cent of those implicated in sexual assaults, with sub-Saharan African nationals accounting for a further 13 per cent.
The nationality tables were missing from the initial publication, unlike in previous years. They were added less than an hour later, after statistician Marc Vanguard publicly asked on X why they had been dropped, according to the JDD.
The share of foreigners among sexual violence suspects on the Paris region network had risen steadily from 40 per cent in 2016 to 62 per cent in 2024, ministry figures cited by the newspaper in December 2025 showed. The 2025 figure held close to that level.
Overall, recorded crime on French public transport continued to fall. Police and gendarmerie registered 104,880 victims of theft, violence or payment fraud in 2025, down 2 per cent on the previous year and 22 per cent on 2016.
Thefts without violence accounted for 77 per cent of victims. The number of victims of physical or sexual violence rose by 3 per cent, though.
In Île-de-France, the ministry counted 13 victims per million journeys, down from 14 in 2024, as passenger numbers grew by 3 per cent.
The statistics cover suspects identified by police and gendarmerie rather than convicted offenders. They record legal nationality only, meaning naturalised citizens appear as French.
The publication of crime data broken down by nationality has become a recurring point of contention in debates on immigration across EU member states. In May, an internal report from Catalonia’s regional police showed foreigners accounted for almost 85 per cent of theft arrests in the Spanish region.
