Emmanuel Macron has called for “order, order, order” and the “return of authority at every level” in the wake of recent urban violence.
From the violence that led to “the burning of schools, town halls, gymnasiums, libraries” and from this “violence of looting”, “the lesson I draw is order, order, order”, declared the President of the Republic in a televised interview on TF1 and France 2 from New Caledonia.
“Order must prevail. There can be no freedom without order, and that means republican order and a return to calm,” he insisted.
According to the Head of State, “our country needs a return to authority at every level, starting with the family”. He spoke of “authority in schools, authority on the part of elected representatives, authority on the part of our security forces”.
“It’s not up to the Ministry of Education, let alone the police, to solve the problem”, said Macron.
“We need to make certain families more responsible, we also need to support other families who are in distress, and we need to reinvest massively in our young people to give them back a framework,” he said.
The head of state also singled out “social networks”, calling for “a digital public order to prevent these outbursts”.
“Many of these young people met up, organised these riots, sometimes entered competitions via certain networks, and so here too we must first succeed in better protecting our children and young teenagers from screens”, he explained.
Lastly, the President felt that we needed to “review our policy for distributing difficulties”: “without doubt one of the limits of our Republic is that for decades we have concentrated difficulties in the same neighbourhoods in the same places”.
On June 27, the death of 17-year-old Nahel, shot at point-blank range by a police officer during a traffic stop in Nanterre, set the country ablaze, provoking several consecutive nights of violence, car-burning, ransacking of public buildings and looting in many French towns.
In all, more than 1,300 people were brought before the courts following the riots, including 608 minors, most of whom were not brought to trial as the procedure is longer for those under 18.
