Emmanuel Macron rejects interior minister’s resignation after French riots

{"text":[[{"start":9.52,"text":"President Emmanuel Macron has refused the French interior minister’s offer to resign over the botched police response to protests that stunned the country and led to thousands of arrests over the weekend."}],[{"start":20.34,"text":"Nationwide demonstrations on Saturday that brought together students protesting education conditions and citizens angry about the high cost of living descended into riots and widespread looting, touching off a political firestorm."}],[{"start":32.2,"text":"“I have a sense of responsibility to the public, and given the damage that was done, it was only right that I offer my resignation,” Laurent Nuñez said on France Inter radio on Monday, admitting that authorities lost control amid “serious outbreaks of violence”."}],[{"start":47.42,"text":"With a high-stakes presidential election in six months, the worst street violence in years has shocked the public and put Macron on the defensive as he faces multiple crises, including widening deficits that have made bond markets jittery."}],[{"start":60.96,"text":"French government bonds sold off again on Monday after a weekend of unrest over the cost of living underlined the challenges facing the Eurozone’s second-biggest economy. The country’s 10-year government bond yields rose 0.08 percentage points to 4.86 per cent, underperforming Eurozone peers."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":78.92,"text":"Ten-year German Bund yields were little changed, meaning that the spread of French 10-year borrowing costs to Germany’s — a key barometer of investor concern — climbed back above 1.4 percentage points."}],[{"start":90,"text":"The Élysée Palace said Macron told Nuñez to remain in his post to “ensure continuity of command” and ordered him to “take all necessary steps to ensure transparency regarding the failures of planning and intelligence that led to the violence”."}],[{"start":104.2,"text":"Unrest and small-scale looting continued on Sunday, including in Paris, where black-clad attackers broke into a mall in the city centre. Nuñez said 350 people were arrested in the capital on Sunday, adding to 2,000 earlier arrests."}],[{"start":117.72,"text":"Rioters had marauded through cities across the country on Saturday, looting about 1,500 stores and businesses, according to the French Retail Federation, which estimated the cost of the damage at “several hundred million euros”."}],[{"start":130.84,"text":"The Socialist mayors of both Paris and Marseille have demanded explanations from the government on how the police lost control of the situation."}],[{"start":139.68,"text":"Saying he was still “livid”, Benoît Payan, mayor of Marseille, accused the police of not adequately defending the town hall, which was invaded on Saturday."}],[{"start":147.66,"text":"“I am still waiting for answers from the interior minister as to why the police pulled back, allowing rioters to break in,” he said on BFM on Monday, adding that France was “the disgrace of Europe this morning”."}],[{"start":160.8,"text":"Nuñez admitted that the police deployment was too small to handle the scale of the protests, which he said had been underestimated by domestic intelligence services. “We had forecast 200,000 demonstrators,” he said on Monday, whereas more than “550,000 people turned out”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":178.4,"text":"He also claimed that 60,000 police officers and firefighters had been deployed nationally, but opposition politicians had earlier said the figure was much lower at about 10,000. The issue is set to figure in an upcoming parliamentary inquiry into the matter."}],[{"start":195.4,"text":"During the height of the “gilets jaunes” protests in 2018, the police deployed 80,000 to 120,000 officers."}],[{"start":203.44,"text":"For weeks, bond investors have been pressuring France over its inability to cut public spending and they anticipate political instability from the presidential election in which far-right leader Marine Le Pen is polling as frontrunner."}],[{"start":217.44,"text":"Macron’s fragile minority government also faces a battle over its proposed belt-tightening budget, which could see it toppled by the end of the year."}],[{"start":225.6,"text":"The protests only made investors “more reluctant” to hold the debt, said Gordon Shannon, fund manager at TwentyFour Asset Management. “[The unrest] is a very clear illustration of the resistance to improving the budget. There’s no mandate inside France for improving the fiscal arithmetic.”"}],[{"start":242.88,"text":"France has suffered the biggest jump in borrowing costs out of the G7 nations since the Iran war began, as global concerns about inflation and debt issuance mix with worries about the outlook for the country’s public finances."}],[{"start":260.44,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792403349_1003.mp3"}