Category Archives: France

Protesters march in cities across France as unions stage general strike

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Hundreds of thousands demonstrate over cost of living and cuts to public services as 70,000 police officers deployed

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in cities across France in the latest round of street demonstrations, as trade unions put pressure on the government with a general strike over the cost of living and cuts to public services.

Striking teachers, hospital staff and rail workers joined high school and university students in largely peaceful demonstrations in Paris and other cities on Thursday amid a high police presence of 70,000 officers.

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French blood banks hacked in latest cyber-attack on Europe

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Temperature and defrosting thresholds raised to ‘very high levels’ at three cold stores stocking vital blood products

France’s national blood service has said hackers accessed control systems and boosted temperatures at three cold stores stocking vital blood products, in an apparent escalation of recent cyber-attacks on fridges and freezers across Europe.

The French blood service (EFS) said temperature and defrosting thresholds had been raised to “very high levels” in the attack, adding that its alarm systems had allowed technicians to intervene before the products were compromised.

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True crime novel about 1949 murder of Paris life model wins France’s biggest literary prize

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Philippe Jaenada wins Prix Goncourt with novel that seeks to solve 77-year-old case and rehabilitates reputation of its victim

A literary true-crime investigation that tries to solve a 77-year-old cold case and ends up rehabilitating the reputation of its life model victim has won France’s most prestigious literary prize.

The author Philippe Jaenada was announced on Tuesday afternoon as the winner of the Prix Goncourt, for his book L’Inconnue du quai de Javel (The Unknown Woman of the Quai de Javel), a recreation of the murder of a 29-year-old Breton woman named Louise Cansot.

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French pupils resume school blockades as country braces for more protests

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Minister warns weeks without lessons are putting exams at risk as unions plan nationwide strike on Thursday

Dozens of high schools across France were blockaded again on Monday as the government braced for another tense week of protests over school conditions and the high cost of living.

The protests come amid warnings that weeks without lessons are putting some pupils’ school year and final exams at risk.

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Attempted murder probe after petrol bomb thrown at French riot police

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Youth-led protests end with street violence in cities across France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Albania

French officials have opened an investigation into the attempted murder of a police officer and Germany’s interior minister has called for harsh penalties after peaceful and mainly youth-led protests across Europe ended in violence.

In Portugal, police – some with dogs – cleared protest camps with baton charges, while security forces in Switzerland were attacked with paving stones.

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Asylum seekers still being sent to France under ‘one in one out’ weeks after scheme ended

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Guardian understands Home Office continues to detain dozens of people, with one group forcibly removed this week

The Home Office is still putting asylum seekers on to planes to France weeks after the controversial scheme to remove them ended, the Guardian has learned.

The “one in, one out” scheme was announced by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the former prime minister Keir Starmer in July 2025. It aimed to deter small boats crossing the Channel to the UK from northern France, with some asylum seekers arriving here forcibly returned to France while a similar number in northern France were brought legally to the UK.

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Police clash with masked rioters after largely peaceful protests across France

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Demonstrations also taking place in Germany, where officers fire teargas to disperse crowds as evening falls

Clashes erupted in Paris, Marseille and other cities on Saturday after tens of thousands of demonstrators, some in Halloween fancy dress, marched across France in a third wave of protests over the cost of living and deteriorating public services.

The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said about 150 planned demonstrations around the country had passed off peacefully, but police had encountered an “extraordinary” level of violence from some rioters as the rallies ended.

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Europe’s central bank chief, Christine Lagarde, steps down for ‘freedom of speech’

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Possible candidate to run World Economic Forum departs ECB nine months early, saying she wants to speak her mind about world affairs

Christine Lagarde, the eurozone’s top central banker, has said she is stepping down nine months early to speak her mind about world affairs and confront the “misrepresentation of the truth”.

Ending months of speculation about her future at the European Central Bank, Lagarde said she would quit her role as president in March rather than October next year because the rules of neutrality that governed her job prevented her from influencing debate about financial and economics affairs.

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Protest leaders urge French pupils to keep barricading their schools

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Activists say struggle must go on until their ‘maximum’ demands are met over teacher shortages and building repairs

French children should continue to barricade their schools and take part in street protests, a student union said on Monday after the government announced a package of education measures to try to stem the crisis.

“Today we’re at the negotiating table, we’re able to negotiate with the government,” Pierre Sourzat of Les Lycéens told France Info television. “We’re in a power struggle and we still need to call for continued mobilisation to meet a maximum of our demands.”

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Hundreds of thousands march across France in protests over schools and policing

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Almost 1,000 arrested as police charge crowd in Paris and teargas used to stop protesters reaching other city centres

Hundreds of thousands marched in cities across France on Saturday in largely peaceful protests to support schoolchildren’s demands for more teachers and repairs to dilapidated buildings, as Emmanuel Macron faces a social and political crisis in his final months as president.

The prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Nice said on Sunday that 59 people had been taken into police custody, including 11 suspected of belonging to extreme-right groups. They were alleged to have gathered with the intent of committing violence. Some were arrested in two vehicles with masks, gloves, gas sprays and truncheons, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement to public broadcaster FranceInfo.

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Macron condemns racism after one killed in ‘terrorist’ shooting near Paris

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Gunman opens fire from car in Trappes and Verrière, killing one and injuring five others, including a 12-year-old girl

Emmanuel Macron has condemned racism in French society after a gunman opened fire from a car west of Paris on Friday, killing one person, wounding a 12-year-old girl and injuring four others in what the president called a “racist terrorist attack”.

Macron arrived at the scene of the drive-by shooting in Trappes on Friday night, saying he was deeply saddened by what he called the “premeditated” attack. The 12-year-old girl, who was shot eight times, is being treated in hospital.

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Angry lawyers and bewildered defendants: the fallout from fast-tracking French rioting cases

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Politicians have called for ruthless sentencing, but lawyers blame the politicians for the poverty, and anger, behind their clients’ looting

Awa, 18, stood in the dock in the tribunal de Paris, a small, mute and bewildered figure seeming unable to understand, let alone answer, the simplest of questions.

The court was told she had joined young people who looted an Yves Saint Laurent store on Boulevard Saint Germain in Paris’s Left Bank late on Sunday and stripped it bare within minutes.

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‘America, this is a warning’: pro- Trump Maga media in a froth over Europe protests

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Fox News and others have toed president’s line – seemingly hoping unrest abroad will make people vote Republican

Donald Trump sought to capitalize on the scenes of unrest in France, telling a crowd in Kansas on Monday that “migrants” and “communists” were responsible, and that the scenes were “what the radical ‘Dumocrats’ want to do to America”.

As Republicans struggle to convince voters across the country ahead of November’s midterm elections, Trump’s allies in the conservative media have followed suit, seemingly hoping that the scenes in France can scare people to the polls.

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Macron accuses Trump and other foreign leaders of ‘stupid comments’ about France unrest

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Leaders criticised for spreading misleading information as France prepares for further protests this weekend

Emmanuel Macron has accused Donald Trump and other foreign leaders of making “stupid comments” about France’s street unrest for political gain, as the country prepared for more protests this weekend.

Speaking during a visit to Qatar, the French president did not name names but said “manipulation of information” after Saturday’s riots had led to “comments that are as unacceptable as they are stupid, from many people, including foreign leaders”.

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Italy to deploy 500 troops to Milan after days of protests and looting

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Government planning tougher security measures as France also says military forces will be deployed

Italy’s government is sending 500 soldiers to Milan and vowed a “firm response from the state” after protests against the cost of living descended into clashes with police, vandalism and looting. Further demonstrations are planned on Saturday.

The government of the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, also announced new security measures, including an offence of violent participation in ⁠a demonstration, tougher penalties for ⁠rioters, and financial liability for ​parents whose children take part in vandalism and looting.

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France imposes partial curfews in several cities, including parts of Paris

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Interior minister concedes police ‘lost control’ of weekend protests and says he is ‘fully resolved to restore public order’

Partial curfews have been issued for a number of French cities, including parts of Paris, after the government admitted police had “lost control” during violent weekend protests around the country.

Sébastien Lecornu, the French prime minister, said after an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday he was “fully resolved to restore public order” and had called for “local and partial” curfews if needed. There was “no question” of imposing a full curfew on entire cities, he said.

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Ferocious criticism from all sides underlines Macron’s isolation

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French president has compounded impression of arrogance with strategic errors – and consequences could be profound

The near-universal chorus of condemnation that greeted Emmanuel Macron’s address to the nation on Sunday, after one of the most violent days of rioting and looting in France’s recent history, was a stark reflection of just how weakened he now is.

Speaking from his office at the Élysée Palace, the president delivered an eight-minute speech expressing “anger and shame” after a weekend in which a town hall was set ablaze, 2,000-plus shops were looted, 2,300 people were arrested and 1,000 police injured.

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Macron criticises ‘unbridled violence’ after days of unrest and 2,400 arrests across France

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Ministers, officials and police under pressure over response to protests as government holds crisis talks amid ‘colossal failure of the state’

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has criticised “unbridled violence” after one of the most violent days of unrest in years left public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested in cities across the country.

“Watching these images, we have all asked ourselves how could French people do this to France?” he said in a televised address.

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‘We are suffocating’: protests spread to Lisbon and Milan as housing and living cost tensions intensify

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Hundreds at Lisbon tent camp demand action, as Giorgia Meloni says march in Italy was exploited by ‘hooligans’

The angry protests that have convulsed Spain and France in recent weeks have spilled over to Italy and Portugal, with rioters clashing with police and setting property on fire in Milan, and a tent encampment springing up in Lisbon over the weekend.

A march in central Milan on Saturday to protest against rising living costs began peacefully but ended with masked rioters throwing stones, paving blocks and other objects at riot police and setting fire to barricades made from bar tables.

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Revealed: French police used UK-funded 4×4 vehicles to charge student protesters

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French government launches investigation into why cars funded by UK to prevent asylum seekers crossing Channel were used in school protests

French police have used 4x4 vehicles paid for by British taxpayers to charge at student protesters during the school protests that have swept the country.

The French government has confirmed that an investigation has been launched into why the cars, funded by the UK government specifically to prevent asylum seekers crossing the Channel, were used during a protest involving school students in Dunkirk.

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