Macron postpones his visit to Germany after four consecutive nights of riots in France

by time news

2023-07-01 16:57:12

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has decided this Saturday today to postpone his visit to Germany that was scheduled to begin this Sunday and end next Tuesday, as a result of the riots that the country has been going through for four nights, motivated by the death of a teenager shot by a police officer.

What is happening in France after the death of a teenager at the hands of the police in Nanterre

Further

In a statement, the Élysée announced that the decision was adopted after Macron held a conversation with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier this Saturday.

“Given the internal situation, the President of the Republic (Macron) has indicated that he wanted to be able to stay in France for the next few days. The two presidents have therefore agreed to postpone the visit to Germany to a later date,” the sources said in a brief statement.

“There is no nation without order”

The French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, has indicated this Saturday that it is still too early to estimate the value of the damages caused by the riots of the last days, although he warned that they are “high”.

“There is no nation without order,” warned the politician, after having led a meeting in Paris with merchants and hoteliers to assess the situation in view of the destruction and economic losses.

Le Maire has detailed that there are a dozen shopping centers affected throughout the country, 200 supermarkets, 250 tobacconists, 250 bank branches and numerous stores of a different nature, such as fashion and sporting goods, as well as fast food restaurants.

The minister has called on insurers to quickly process compensation for their clients and announced that they are planning other support measures for businessmen affected, such as the possibility of delaying their tax contributions or extending the discount period by one week. who started their first big weekend today.

The Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, has also reported that a third of the detainees are minors (up to 13 years old) and that parents are responsible for their actions, in addition to the central role that social networks are playing. “Let no one think that behind these social networks there is impunity,” he warned.

This afternoon the French president is scheduled to participate in a meeting with the country’s mayors to assess the situation. The French government has also held a meeting of the Interministerial Crisis Cell (CIC), focused on operational aspects after four days of protests, according to sources from the office of the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, quoted by the FranceInfo public channel.

Despite the absence of ministers at this meeting, the same sources indicated that they will remain in Paris. Other government figures, such as state secretaries, have traveled to follow the situation on the ground. The CIC had already held a meeting this Friday that was led by French President Emmanuel Macron himself, who cut short his planned stay in Brussels – where he had traveled for a European summit – in order to attend in person.

More than a thousand detainees

Last night, at least 1,311 people were arrested throughout the country and 79 police officers were injured, according to figures provided by the Ministry of the Interior, which also detailed that there were 1,350 vehicles on fire and damage to some 234 buildings.

Despite the large number of arrests, higher than that of the previous days, the French authorities affirm that the incidents were less intense than the night from Thursday to Friday.

“Thanks to the mobilization of internal security forces throughout the country, the violence committed last night was less intense than the night before,” the authorities said on Twitter when communicating the first nightly balance on Saturday morning.

The night was calmer in the Paris region, although serious incidents did not stop in peripheral areas such as Seine-Saint-Denis or Nanterre, where the death of the young Nahel M. took place on the 27th.

In places like Marseille, where the Government had to send reinforcements at night at the request of the City Council, Grenoble or Lyon were more worrying, with scenes of looting included.

For this night from Friday to Saturday, the Government had put 45,000 police officers on the streets with a reinforced device that included the deployment of light armored vehicles from the Gendarmerie.

The previous night the number of arrests rose to 875 and there were almost 300 policemen injured, although none seriously.

The trigger for this wave of altercations was the death of a 17-year-old young man of Arab descent named Nahel, who was fatally shot by a police officer as he tried to flee from a police checkpoint in Nanterre on the 27th.

The images of the incident, recorded by witnesses, have sparked strong indignation in the country that has led to riots, especially in the popular neighborhoods of large cities and in the metropolitan area of ​​Paris.

The young man’s funerals were held this morning, as Patrick Jarry, the mayor of Nanterre, had detailed the day before, although in a statement to the French press the family specified that they wanted a day of “discretion” and “recollection”, so who asked that journalists not attend.

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