French authorities arrested at least 1,800 people nationwide after Saturday demonstrations over fuel prices, wages and classroom conditions gave way to coordinated looting, arson and attacks on public buildings, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Sunday. The toll capped France's most violent day of cost-of-living unrest in years and left President Emmanuel Macron promising prosecutions while opposition leaders traded blame ahead of the 2027 presidential race.
The interior ministry said roughly 550,000 people marched, including about 110,000 in Paris, while the CGT union put national turnout closer to 800,000. Most processions stayed peaceful, but Nunez said thousands of far-left activists and criminal groups used the crowds as cover to smash storefronts, storm prefectures and set fires in Marseille, Lyon, Lille and Avignon. More than 500 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were injured, he added, and material damage was "considerable."
Limoges town hall gutted
In central France, rioters burned much of Limoges' historic town hall during the night. Mayor Guillaume Guerin told broadcaster LCI the destruction was "appalling" and said the country felt as if it were "in chaos." Paris woke Sunday to charred bicycles, burned-out cars and glass piled along avenues where luxury boutiques and bakeries had been ransacked. Prosecutors said 517 people remained in custody in the capital region alone, including 171 minors, with many arrests tied to suspected handling of stolen goods and group violence.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu blamed a "highly organized" violent fringe and said 150 officers were hurt in clashes he linked to the same networks. Police deployed tear gas, water cannon and baton charges in several cities. Le Figaro reported that a 17-year-old in Saint-Etienne lost a hand to a police grenade, a detail that is likely to fuel separate investigations into crowd-control tactics even as Nunez insisted that "the Republic will yield nothing" to disorder.
Politics and what comes next
Macron wrote on X that attacking law enforcement, prefectures and businesses "cannot be justified," and he pledged that perpetrators would be prosecuted. Marine Le Pen accused far-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon's camp of having "legitimized the violence," while Melenchon urged supporters to stay away from looting, calling it contrary to his movement's methods. The demonstrations merged student anger over teacher shortages and crumbling schools with wider grievances over diesel costs, farm incomes and stretched public budgets.
France's high debt and deficit leave limited room for the spending increases many marchers demand, and online calls to revive the yellow-vest movement have sharpened government anxiety that student protests could broaden into sustained unrest. Nunez said coordinated violence — not the right to demonstrate — drove the arrest record. With municipal cleanup still underway and custody hearings continuing, officials face pressure to explain how marches billed as a living-cost revolt repeatedly ended in torched institutions and emptied shops.