French President Emmanuel Macron has declined the resignation offered by interior minister Laurent Nuñez following some of the most serious urban violence France has seen in years.
Nationwide protests, originally against the cost of living, the state of public services and conditions in schools on October 17 drew hundreds of thousands of people. The interior ministry counted about 550,000 marchers; the CGT union claimed more than 800,000.
In many cities the marches were overtaken by large-scale violence by migrant youths and left-wing agitators.
The historic city hall in Limoges was set alight and largely destroyed, the tourist office in Lyon was burned, shops were looted in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and elsewhere, and groups clashed with police. The Limoges building, opened in 1883 and listed as a historic monument since 1975, lost its 43-metre campanile to the blaze.
🔴😳 La mairie de Limoges est en train de s’effondrer.
Quelle tristesse infinie.
J’espère que ce 17 octobre marquera un tournant et sera le début de la révolte face aux crapules d’extrême-gauche et aux criminels qui saccagent notre pays. #17Octobre pic.twitter.com/0iRxxA2aUn
— Bleu Blanc Rouge ! 🇫🇷 (@LBleuBlancRouge) October 17, 2026
Hooded groups forced their way into the city halls of Lille and Marseille, where the prefecture put the number of rioters at 7,000 to 8,000.
Nearly 2,400 people were arrested and almost 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured, according to the interior ministry. One demonstrator died in Paris after a cardiorespiratory arrest, the city’s police prefecture said.
Further disturbances occurred on October 18 in Paris and Marseille.
Macron addressed the nation in a speech on the evening of October 18, speaking of “anger and shame” and of “failures in anticipation and intelligence”.
He said the rioters would pay for their destruction and that looters would have to reimburse what they took.
Nuñez tendered his resignation on October 18.
In a statement on October 19 the Élysée said Macron had refused it “given the necessity for continued leadership of law enforcement at this time”.
The president instructed the minister to ensure transparency on the planning and intelligence failures and to put new operational methods in place quickly to deal with looters and “casseurs”.
Riots across France today.
Looting, fires, vandalism and attacks against policemen and firefighters reported from cities across the country. pic.twitter.com/ZpVnuXTvC3
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 17, 2026
On France Inter, Nuñez said he had offered to resign “because I am responsible for everything that happens” and acknowledged that police had “lost control” in some major cities because the deployment had been severely under-sized relative to the number of violent participants.
He said turnout had been underestimated by a factor of two and a half.
Nuñez headed the DGSI, France’s domestic intelligence service, in 2017-2018 and was Paris police prefect until taking over the interior ministry in October 2025.
The French retail federation said about 1,500 shops were targeted, at a cost running into hundreds of millions of euros.
Opposition politicians called for Nuñez’s departure, and mayors in affected cities criticised the response. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu chaired an interministerial crisis meeting on October 19, and mayors rallied outside town halls the same day.
A video from October 6 has also recirculated on X in which Nuñez defined “losing control” as a situation in which “hordes” paraded through city centres, looted shops and committed violence.
Critics have contrasted those remarks with the scenes of October 17-18.
Justice minister Gérald Darmanin said in reaction to Nuñez’s move: “He’s a great minister of the interior, there’s a difficult time. We have failed, unquestionably, as he himself acknowledged.”
“What the President of the Republic and the Minister of the Interior said is that there was a defect in the intelligence. We don’t make good policies, without good information,” he said.
“Obviously, [our intelligence] doesn’t know how to fight the ultra-left,” he said. “In the coming years, one of the threats that will affect our country with organised crime and terrorism is the ultra-left factious.”
Darmanin said 2,331 people had been held in police custody, that more than 80 per cent of them faced prosecution and that seven in 10 of those detained were adults.
Renaissance secretary general Gabriel Attal, a declared candidate for the 2027 presidential election, called for all police forces to be focused on the security of the French and backed the “temporary” use of the armed forces.
He said France was facing “a civilisational question”.
National Rally president Jordan Bardella said the weekend saw “one of the biggest security failures” and that “France has been humiliated.”
He demanded strong measures and called for the restoration of order by all possible legal means, applying the principle of those who break things have to pay for it.
This includes the suspension of social assistance for violent rioters and prison time for those who fight with the police.
Raphaël Glucksmann, an MEP and the social-democratic candidate for the 2027 presidential election, condemned the violence as an attack on the Republic itself, writing on X that the “unprecedented ultra-violence” had nothing to do with the social movement or school protests and that the thousands of “casseurs” were there only “to strike, burn and smash”.
He called the violence “unjustifiable and unacceptable”, arguing that the legitimate demands of hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators had been drowned out by the rioters, and called for a “great republican surge” so that calm could return and France could escape a spiral of violence that risked engulfing everyone.
US President Donald Trump also gave his opinion on Truth Social, stating: “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your borders and take control, before it is too late!”
NEW: Video & photos provided to @FoxNews via @GraceCarnathan, who is in Paris right now, give a look at the ongoing riots there, with fires burning in multiple areas of the city. One mob shown with Soviet Union & pro-Communist flags. pic.twitter.com/1q3ertO4q8
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) October 17, 2026
