During a celebration on Sunday to honour Champions League victors Paris Saint-Germain, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “unacceptable scenes of violence” and mayhem across the country following the match on Saturday.
The historic repeat win for PSG was marred by a repeat of widespread destruction by hordes of youths who rioted, set fires, clashed with police, and looted in cities and towns throughout France.
During the chaotic evening, which was described by French paper of record Le Figaro as “bad remake of A Clockwork Orange” with a “Dantean atmosphere”, some 780 people were arrested, 219 were injured, including eight seriously, and one young man lost his life. Meanwhile, at least 15 cities recorded instances of looting.
While honouring members of the Paris Saint-Germain champion squad on Sunday at the Elysée Palace, French President Emmanuel Macron took time to condemn those who took part in the fracas.
“I don’t want us to become accustomed to this. We saw unacceptable scenes of violence in Paris and other cities last night, for a good part of the night,” the President said per Le Parisien.
“I want to thank the Minister of the Interior, the Prefect of Police, all the teams who mobilised in the Paris region and in many provincial cities in the face of what is unspeakable. I want to thank our law enforcement, the shopkeepers, the victims,” he added.
“That’s not football, that’s not sport, that’s not what we like. So thank you to our police officers, to our gendarmes. We will be uncompromising with those who have been caught. We don’t want to see this anymore. It’s over. We’ve had enough,” Macron vowed.
For his part, Minister of Interior Laurent Nuñez defended the government’s response, saying that the situation was largely “under control” and that France was a “great country for managing public order”.
However, some were quick to note the distinctly multicultural aspect of the riots and, therefore, linked the outbreak of violence to the government’s failures to limit immigration or remove those with no right to remain in the country.
Former French presidential candidate Eric Zémmour, who was personally accosted during the aftermath of the match on Saturday, said: “Every PSG victory, same result. Every major national celebration, same result.
“No police deployment can compensate. At some point, you have to stop deploying riot police and start EXPELLING those who turn every gathering into a battlefield.”
Former Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau also directly linked the violence to mass migration, which he said has “fueled the erosion of respect for the law and the weakening of the republican pact.”
The Républicain candidate for president added that he would implement facial recognition software to identify “every rioter” and to restore financial liability for rioting, saying: “You smash, you pay.”