Summary

Have you witnessed the protests?

  1. Vendors found selling goods stolen during riots will be prosecuted, ministers warnpublished at 15:54 BST

    Police officers detain a person at a ransacked Franprix store as clashes erupted at Place de la Republique.Image source, Getty Images
    Image caption,

    Police officers detain a person at a shop in Paris which was looted during riots on Sunday

    Goods looted during protests over the weekend have been listed on certain selling platforms, two French government ministers have said.

    The joint statement from Anna Le Hénanff and Serge Papin calls for the platforms to remove the listings and says the resellers will be prosecuted.

    It says the ministers met with the platforms today alongside representatives from France's interior and justice ministries.

    A Vinted spokesperson says the sale or solicitation of stolen goods is "strictly prohibited" and the platform has zero tolerance for it, with accounts found breaching rules having the potential to be permanently banned.

    "Since this weekend, our teams have taken immediate action to identify and remove listings linked to the looting, and we have stepped up monitoring of suspicious listings," it says.

    The platforms says it is actively collaborating with law enforcement and French authorities, adding it is continually adapting its processes "to detect and counter emerging risks and malicious behaviour".

  2. Riots will not end until France's political crisis is solved, says Paris mayorpublished at 15:33 BST

    Emmanuel Grégoire wears a sash over a dark suit while speaking into several microphones among a crowd of people.Image source, Reuters

    The mayor of Paris has called on Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to begin negotiations with organisations representing the education sector to pave the way for a resolution to the country's riots.

    Speaking to journalists in front of the capital's city hall a little earlier, Emmanuel Grégoire says a more specific platform of demands needs to be worked on to lay the groundwork for ending the unrest.

    He says the riots affecting the country will not be resolved until there is a response to France's current political crisis.

    Our Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield has described how rioters in France are exploiting the country's political situation.

  3. Marseille shop owners in distress as city tries to recover after violent weekendpublished at 15:20 BST

    Nick Beake
    Europe correspondent, in Marseille

    A person walking down a road lined with police vehicles in Marseille.

    We’ve just got to Marseille - France’s second biggest city by population - which saw considerable violence at the weekend.

    We have arrived in the middle of an emergency ban on people gathering in public, which kicked in at midday and is due to lapse at 20:00 local time (19:00 BST).

    Here in the city centre, in driving rain, the clean up is continuing after the chaos of Saturday.

    More than 600 shops were looted in that frenzy, according to business leaders.

    The regional Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie (CCI) says this is at least twice the number compared with the last time there were riots in the city, three years ago.

    Jean-Luc Chauvin, the president of the Marseille-Province branch of the organisation, says the damage to buildings as well as the destruction and theft of stock has come at what should be the busiest time of the year when businesses make 30% of their turnover in the lead up to Christmas.

    He says many shop owners are now in "deep distress" and fear for their survival.

  4. Partial curfews in France - what we knowpublished at 15:13 BST

    In the aftermath of this weekend's unrest, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has announced some French cities will be given the power to implement partial curfews.

    This, he said, is a "more appropriate" measure to take than declaring a state of emergency - which he has not ruled out entirely.

    The curfews will be local and targeted and are designed to protect people and businesses, the PM said earlier.

    Though, it still remains unclear where these could be implemented or what they will look like in practice.

    He added it would be "impossible" to put in place a curfew across the whole of Paris, but localised measures can be taken.

    A partial curfew has already been implemented in Marseille - the city has banned public gatherings from noon until 20:00 local time (11:00-19:00 BST).

    In our next post we will bring you the latest from our Europe correspondent Nick Beake who is in Marseille.

  5. BBC Verify

    Tracing the origin of earliest calls for Saturday’s protestspublished at 14:53 BST

    By Marco Silva

    BBC Verify has traced some of the earliest calls for Saturday's protests in France to a little-known TikTok account.

    In early September an account called "V2" - which usually posted football content - shared a video of a young man calling for demonstrations over rising fuel prices.

    While the video is no longer available on TikTok, we found an archived copy of it online.

    About 25 minutes after that post a second video suggested 17 October as the date.

    "[People] talk too much… We don’t have a date… 17 October is a Saturday and it’s the holidays, everyone can be there," he said in the post, which has since been watched 5.7 million times.

    "V2" has not yet responded to BBC Verify’s requests for comment.

    Within days, other accounts were promoting protests on the same date, some using AI-generated images and symbols associated with the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) - a French protest movement that began in 2018.

    It remains unclear who was behind these accounts or whether they were working together.

    But the calls continued to spread across social media gaining support from more established activists, student groups and trade unions.

    By October, websites and channels on the Telegram messaging app were actively sharing protest locations and practical information.

  6. Violence on streets of France is unacceptable - EU spokesmanpublished at 14:28 BST

    A man walks behind a torched van on a street in Paris.Image source, Getty Images

    EU spokesman Markus Lammert says widespread violence including arson, looting and attacks on people and public buildings in France are "unacceptable".

    He adds the right to peaceful protest in France must be protected but that it is important not to conflate those who demonstrate peacefully with people who commit violence.

  7. French PM must prove ultra-left radicals accusation or shut up, says left-wing candidatepublished at 14:17 BST

    Jean-Luc Mélenchon, gestures as he delivers a speech before a demonstration by public sector workers to demand better working conditions and more resources,Image source, Reuters
    Image caption,

    Jean-Luc Mélenchon has previously accused the PM of "playing with fire" by allowing the situation in France to "fester"

    French presidential hopeful Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls for the French PM to "prove his accusation" that "ultra-left radical groups" orchestrated recent disorder in France.

    Sébastien Lecornu claimed in an earlier news conference that the groups "want to create chaos in our country up until the presidential elections".

    Mélenchon, who is the presidential candidate for left-wing La France Insoumise, adds that if Lecornu cannot prove his accusation then he must "apologise, shut up, and stop stoking disorder".

    He adds that he "hasn't heard anyone talking about this, neither in private nor in public".

    The protests in France are taking place against a tense political backdrop, with Mélenchon set to take on hard-right Marine Le Pen in next year's presidential elections.

  8. France has big questions to discuss as unrest becomes difficult to control, journalist sayspublished at 13:51 BST

    A local resident crosses the street with his broom on Rue Yves Toudic after a weekend of protests. Burnt out cars are in the background.Image source, Getty Images

    Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief for the Economist, says "a degree of organised violence" is making the unrest in France "difficult to control".

    When asked about PM Sébastien Lecornu's repeated remarks that "ultra-left radical groups" are to blame, she the tells BBC Radio 4's World at One programme there are three different types of protesters on the streets of France.

    Pedder says these groups are: peaceful protesters, organised hooligans, and looters, but adds that it is "difficult to distinguish who is really behind" the unrest.

    Though, she says this "underlying tension" is caused by the upcoming presidential election.

    Pedder says that recent polls suggest far-right and far-left candidates are likely to be at the run-off for the next presidential elections, which points to a "potential collapse of the centrist mainstream offering in France".

    Pedder adds that France has "big questions" to discuss, including how to fund the welfare state and "find economic growth again".

  9. Analysis

    Unclear what partial curfews will look like in practicepublished at 13:24 BST

    Hugh Schofield
    Paris Correspondent

    The French government is hard-put to formulate a reaction that is commensurate to the terrifying scale of the weekend’s urban unrest.

    After a crisis cabinet meeting in Paris, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu made a series of announcements.

    He said a state of emergency could be installed if the riots continue and in the meantime localised overnights curfews could be put in place.

    Lecornu gave some local mayors powers to put those in place, but it is not quite clear what they'd look like in practice.

    It could mean that the area around Place de la République in Paris is off-limits during specific times. I suspect a series of such measures will be announced in the capital and cities like Marseille and Bordeaux.

    He said 200 police investigators were now examining online footage taken of themselves by looters, with the aim of bringing them to justice.

    And he also repeated his attack on the political far-left, who he blamed for trying to stir up disorder in the run-up to next April’s presidential elections.

  10. BBC Verify

    Images of 'rioting Pink Panther' are AI-generatedpublished at 12:57 BST

    By Charlotte Green

    Images appearing to show the Pink Panther rioting in France have gathered millions of views across social media platforms over the last week.

    While we have verified real footage of protesters dressed in Superman and Captain America costumes these pictures of the Pink Panther were made using artificial intelligence (AI).

    We can say this because we uploaded them to a detector which searches for the invisible SynthID watermark that is embedded in some AI-generated images and tells us which tools created them.

    All of these Pink Panther images were made using Google’s AI tools.

    We also did a reverse image search to find the earliest version of the pictures posted online and found they first emerged from an Instagram account advertising AI art.

    It also features AI pictures of other fictional characters rioting including Homer Simpson and the Teletubbies.

    Composite image labelled “Viral AI-generated images of Pink Panther rioting” showing three fabricated scenes featuring a pink cartoon-character costume amid civil unrest. In the left panel, the character runs through a street with flames and people in protective gear in the background. In the centre panel, the character runs near a vehicle spraying a powerful water cannon. In the right panel, the character appears to be dragged across a street by riot police outside a luxury shopfront. A red banner across the bottom reads “AI-GENERATED” with a warning symbol. Source credit: AliFramez; BBC logo in bottom right corner.
  11. 'It was hard to breathe almost all over Paris', says newlywed in France for honeymoonpublished at 12:38 BST

    Madeleine Lake
    Live reporter

    A young couple with the Eiffel Tower in the backgroundImage source, Eliza Lumani
    Image caption,

    Eliza Lumani says she got the "full French experience" but not the one she expected

    Eliza Lumani has just spent the weekend in Paris for her honeymoon, which has always been a dream of hers. She says she had "absolutely no idea" that protests would be taking place.

    The 28-year-old, originally from Sweden, tells me that she came across peaceful protesters when exploring the city, with some telling her that they are protesting for "better school and living conditions".

    Later on, things escalated. She saw fires, and was scared by tear gas, and particularly the "loud boom" sounds from canisters being thrown by police.

    A car destroyed by fireImage source, Eliza Lumani
    Image caption,

    Their hotel was on the other side of Paris, meaning they needed to walk through the streets to reach it

    "I was never really afraid of the protesters themselves. I never felt like they were there to physically hurt anyone. What was actually scary was the tear gas, which made it difficult to breathe," Eliza explains.

    She says seeing the protests has given her a new perspective on the city.

    "I’ve always seen it as a beautiful and romantic city, but seeing people, especially the younger generation from all backgrounds standing up for what they believe in showed me a different side of Paris."

  12. Recap: PM asks some cities to impose partial curfews after rioting and lootingpublished at 12:09 BST

    rance's Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu (C) speaks to the press flanked by (from L) France's Education Minister Edouard Geffray, France's Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou, France's Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, France's Trade Minister Serge Papin, France's Urbanity and Decentralisation Minister Francoise Gatel, France's Higher Education, Research and Space Minister Philippe Baptiste and France's junior Minister for Public Accounts David AmielImage source, Getty Images

    Here's what we heard from French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu:

    • Around 80% of people arrested for rioting and violence during a weekend of protests in France face criminal charges
    • Local mayors now have the power to introduce partial curfews, aimed at protecting people and businesses. He did not specify which cities were given these powers
    • Any necessary repairs to damaged properties will be funded by those responsible, with a law to be put in place to make this possible
    • A partial unemployment fund is also being set up to support those who cannot work because their businesses are out of action
    • The prime minister blamed "ultra-left radical groups" for the instability, with Lecornu accusing them of working to destabilise the country ahead of next year's presidential elections
  13. PM has confidence in minister who offered to resignpublished at 11:57 BST

    Laurent Nuñez (L) looks ahead as French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu speaks to the mediaImage source, EPA/Shutterstock
    Image caption,

    Laurent Nuñez (L) offered to resign on Sunday but was asked to stay on by French President Emmanuel Macron

    The PM is now asked whether he has confidence in Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, who is stood next to him after offering to resign on Sunday evening.

    Lecornu answers that he trusts Nuñez. If this wasn't the case, he wouldn't "be beside me right now", the PM says.

    "We all need to be firm and strong together," he concludes.

  14. French PM blames 'ultra-left radical groups' for violent protestspublished at 11:49 BST

    For Lecornu, ultra-left radical groups are to blame for the instability witnessed over the weekend.

    "There's a movement led by very ultra-left radical groups that really want to destabilise, that want to create chaos in our country up until the presidential elections."

    Given this, he says there will also be increased security around political meetings and gatherings, to ensure "democracy can exercise itself in the next few weeks and months".

    "We will not be dictated and ruled by the breakers, by the thieves, by the thugs."

  15. Rioters will fund recovery efforts, prime minister sayspublished at 11:46 BST

    We can bring you more from Lecornu, who says he is giving local mayors the power to implement curfews "where they need".

    He says the government will also set aside money to help affected areas recover from the damage, adding that this funding will come from those behind the violence.

    "There will be a law that will be put in place to find ways of making sure that those who have damaged properties will have to pay," Lecornu says.

    Lecornu also announces a partial unemployment fund for those who cannot work as a result of the riots and looting.

    He adds that the government is speaking to insurers to ensure people are able to access funds as quickly as possible.

  16. PM gives local mayors power to implement partial curfewspublished at 11:43 BST
    Breaking

    France's Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu (C) addresses the press as he's flanked by a series of government officialsImage source, Getty Images

    Lecornu says that the justice minister will speak later to provide more details about how the government is working to prevent further violence.

    He says an important operation is beginning today in Paris involving 200 investigators, who will analyse footage of violence from over the weekend.

    The prime minister has also given local mayors the power to introduce partial curfews in some parts of the country, which he says is designed to protect people and businesses.

  17. Lecornu: 80% of those arrested face criminal chargespublished at 11:37 BST

    Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu says local mayors are questioning how police forces organised themselves in response to rioting and looting, in order to explain how the disorder was allowed to unfold.

    "The French people want to know how the disorder came about, how it all unfolded, and how this violence came about in our country", he says, adding that there had been more disorder in Paris and Marseille last night.

    Lecornu says around 80% of people arrested as part of rioting and looting over the weekend face criminal charges.

  18. French PM making statement - watch livepublished at 11:29 BST

    French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is speaking now after holding a crisis cabinet meeting about the weekend of riots and looting.

    Follow along by watching live at the top of this page. We'll also bring you the key lines right here.

  19. Analysis

    Rioters exploit political paralysis in Francepublished at 11:12 BST

    Hugh Schofield
    Paris Correspondent

    Two people leave a vandalised shop through a broken windowImage source, KAI

    A meeting has been taking place between Sébastien Lecornu and various ministers where they are likely to have discussed various aspects of this weekend's protests.

    Some of it is going to be about insurance and bailing out the thousands of shopkeepers - many of which have lost all they had.

    Small mobile phone shops which were looted in Paris are often little one-person enterprises - they’ve lost everything.

    It’s a big deal, there’s a lot of money that will have to be mobilised by the state to bail them out.

    There’s also the security aspect of all of this. What went wrong, should there be a change of tactics, or is it simply a case of the police just don’t have the numbers to cope with what has happened?

    But the general political reaction is one of powerlessness and the sense we are at the end of a regime - President Macron is on his way out, there are presidential elections next year.

    There is a lack of power at the centre, which the rioters are rushing into.

  20. French PM to make public statementpublished at 10:59 BST

    French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will shortly make a televised statement addressing violent protests over the weekend.

    We'll bring you the latest lines here - you will also be able to watch live at the top of this page.

    Sébastien Lecornu holds a Cabinet meetingImage source, Getty Images