Marine Le Pen has urged voters to deliver a “renaissance for France” as she opened a new phase of her presidential campaign, just one day after another wave of violent protests swept across the country.
Police said 1,314 people were arrested during demonstrations over the weekend, while 53 officers were injured in clashes.
The National Rally leader has seized on the unrest to strengthen her campaign for France’s presidency in April. She has accused the current government of showing weakness toward violent protesters and failing to assert control.
Recent opinion polls indicate that the far-right politician remains a serious contender, threatening to displace Emmanuel Macron’s centrist political camp.
Speaking to around 10,000 party members in Orleans on Sunday afternoon, Le Pen pledged “real change” and promised that the National Rally would “restore the rule of law”.
“Of course, the period we are living through concerns us. Everyone in this room knows that,” she said. “Today, the words that come to mind are ruin, decline, riots and even chaos, disappearance.”
“I am not offering a return to the France of the past. I am offering to build the France of tomorrow.”
Earlier, RN president and Le Pen’s running mate Jordan Bardella addressed the gathering, warning that France was “on the verge of collapse”.
Marine Le Pen has called for a “renaissance for France” as she campaigns for the presidency
Opinion polls show the far-right politician remains in contention, challenging Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp
The latest unrest marked a second consecutive weekend of demonstrations, as more than 400,000 people marched through major French cities on Saturday over the rising cost of living.
Black-clad “ultra-left” extremists followed the marches, police said. Water cannon and tear gas were deployed after what Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described as “an extremely elevated level of violence”.
The Interior Ministry reported that officers dealt with 75 fires during Saturday’s protests and said 24 shops had been looted.
“Several investigations have been opened,” the ministry said in a statement, without providing further details. It added that the remainder of Saturday night was “calm” after the clashes subsided.
The ministry’s Sunday statement did not specify how many protesters had been injured.
However, late on Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said two protesters had suffered serious injuries—one in Toulouse and another in Clermont-Ferrand.
Authorities in Toulouse said a 20-year-old man had sustained a serious injury to his hand.
A street medic who treated demonstrators told reporters anonymously that the man had lost “several fingers” from his right hand.
The prefecture responsible for Clermont-Ferrand said another man had injured his hand, but had not lost any fingers.
La Nouvelle Republique, a French regional newspaper, reported that a man in Poitiers had suffered an injury to his left eye. The report included a photograph of the man holding his face.
A protester kicks away a tear gas canister as police moved to disperse the crowds in Paris
A French Republican Security Corps officer confronts a protester on the ground in Marseille on Saturday afternoon
A fire burns in Toulouse as protests against the government turned violent into Saturday evening
Protesters hold placards featuring images of French far–right politicians Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, during a demonstration against ‘racism, fascism, and imperialism’ as the RN holds its party congress in Orleans yesterday
The newspaper’s photographer said he was a 19–year–old who was wounded during a charge by riot police firing stun grenades and tear gas.
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There have been several instances in recent weeks, during student protests in France, of people being maimed by police stun grenades or tear gas grenades.
It was not known if the injuries reported from Saturday were from those police weapons. Officials said investigations had been opened in at least some of the cases.
A week earlier, on October 17, similar nationwide marches took place, also against rising inflation sent surging by the war in the Middle East.
These, too, degenerated into street violence, with public buildings vandalised and hundreds of shops looted.
The mass rallies were fed by four weeks of student protests across France, over classroom conditions and access to university places, which at times also descended into clashes.
Unions and Yellow Vest protesters have vowed to keep up their street marches in the weeks ahead, pointing to a febrile period as the elections draw near.
Police were on Sunday filtering traffic going into Orleans, after thousands of counter–protesters opposed to Le Pen and her anti–immigration, nationalist RN marched in the city on Saturday chanting anti–fascist slogans.
Police put their numbers at 13,000, while organisers estimated the turnout at twice that.
Despite the protests, polling has shown French voters, angry over Macron’s perceived detachment over his two terms and his recent orders to curb the protests, are turning to more extremist politics.
An Ipsos survey published Saturday suggested Le Pen would score 32 to 34 percent of the vote in the first round of the election, with a far–left rival, Jean–Luc Melenchon, getting 17 percent. Centrist candidates from mainstream parties trailed them.
Asked about the protest violence, a majority of the 1,500 people questioned in the survey – 58 percent – said they felt anger.
It found 81 percent believed the government was ‘responsible for this situation’, while 79 percent thought radical political groups were, 62 percent blamed the left, and 52 percent blamed the police.
If Le Pen wins the two–stage presidential elections in April and May, she has vowed to cut the cost of living through capped household energy bills, reduced taxes and trimming France’s contribution to the European Union.
She is also critical of NATO, and of France’s support of Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.
The RN, which portrays itself as a party of law and order, has also sided strongly with the police in the current unrest.
The head of Le Pen’s party, Jordan Bardella, whom she intends to make prime minister if she becomes president, has visited police stations to underline that credential.
Regardless, whoever wins the presidency will find limited room to throw money around to placate various clamouring interest groups.
France’s public debt and budget deficit have climbed well beyond the ceilings EU member countries are meant to stick to.
Macron’s government is trying to get a cost–cutting budget adopted, but faces headwinds from both the sustained protests demanding more spending and the political jockeying by parties eyeing power.
As Macron sees out the final months of his presidency, he has to tread a line between cracking down on street violence and opening dialogue with unions, students and other groups to attempt to restore order.
Although the French president has not invoked a state of emergency, he has ordered bans on non–union demonstrations deemed ‘illegitimate’, and officials under him have imposed bans on protests in city centres and localised curfews in certain zones.
Many protesters on Saturday raged against the measures, describing them as an assault on the French right to protest.
The Yellow Vest movement, which challenged Macron eight years ago with street disruptions, has called for another day of protests next Saturday.
And the powerful CGT union, prominent in the demonstrations, is urging a campaign of strikes starting from November 5.
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