'Lame-duck president' Macron notes 'failures' after France unrest

And I'm joined now by Philip Terrell from our International Affairs desk to discuss this a little bit more. Philip, Emmanuel Macron spoke last night. He vowed to punish all those who were behind this violent protest. His comments come as the blame game has got underway for who was behind all the violence on Saturday. Will Macron's comments go anywhere in trying to calm the situation? It's very hard to say. For the moment, it doesn't look as though that's had much of an effect that the comments that Emmanuel Macron has made. He's made further comments this morning, been a communique from the Elysee Palace, certainly concerning the resignation of the interior minister, Laurent Nunez, which has been denied by or refused by Emmanuel Macron. but I think there is a notion in France amongst his political rivals and certainly amongst the protesters that Emmanuel Macron is at the end of his presidential term he's got six months to go this is what Andrew was just talking about and I think that many can smell blood we're at the end of the Macron era and there's not a lot he can do that disastrous dissolution of 2024 left him with an even smaller uh maneuvering ability within the national assembly which is reduced to almost nothing so he's finding it very hard to pass policies there is no money in the state coffers france has a 3.3 trillion euro debt uh just to give you an idea of that that the money that is paid in interest every year is bigger than the budget which covers uh the education system in france so there's no ready cash available and emmanuel macron back at the start of the covid epidemic said or pandemic said uh that everything will be paid for whatever the cost there was certainly no mention of that last night he just said that uh those whose businesses have been destroyed or dilapidated would receive money but no notion about how much money would be paid out and who is going to pay that money whether it's the state whether it's the local authorities or whether it's the insurance companies so a lot of unanswered questions in what emmanuel Macron was saying basically he's a lame duck president right now the only thing he can do the only maneuvering ability he's got and he said that last night during his address was that he's off to the gulf today to meet four heads of state down there Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar in a bid to try to shore up better supplies of oil and diesel to France to bring down the price of fuel not only for domestic heating, but also at the petrol pumps for people driving around the country because of the war in Iran and the problems on the Strait of Hormuz. Those prices have gone skyrocketing, not only in France, but elsewhere in the world. Emmanuel Macron underlining it's not France's fault that those prices have gone up, but he's trying his hardest to do the necessary to bring them down. Will that have an effect? It's hard to say right now. I think there's so much anger in this country that many people think, Well, as far as Emmanuel Macron is concerned, this is going to be just too little, too late. Now, does this boil down to a row between different parties across the French political spectrum? And has this been perhaps exacerbated by the upcoming presidential election? I think that most of the political parties are beginning to smell blood. They know that Emmanuel Macron can't run for another term. We have elections coming up next year in April and May. And they're using the unrest in France. they're orchestrating that system to try to sway support in their favor the far left has been blamed by many for being behind these protests jean-luc melancholy of the far left of france on battle has been criticized for inciting people to commit crimes one of his mayors in the northern town of saint-denis bali bakayoko has even said well just violence can be justified in some instances, which has been very heavily criticized. But of course, they are behind Marine Le Pen. She's on 32 percent in the opinion polls right now, leading in the first round of the presidential election. What we're seeing here is the far left is pushing people to go out and confront the authorities. But the long term effect of that is going to push more people into the hands of the far right, which has put themselves forward as being the guardians of security and the anti immigration party so i think one of the effects of these this violence that we're seeing here in france is going to boost support even further for marine le pen behind her you have edouard philippe who's been also criticizing the government and the lack of response from the police forces he's a former prime minister under emmanuel macron in the center right then there's rafael glucksmann who is a social democrat on 16 percent and jean-luc mélenchon of the far left france on out of 15%. Those three candidates are all neck and neck for the second place in the presidential election. So it looks like for the second round, it's going to be Marine Le Pen against one of those three. We don't know at the moment who it could be, but it might be Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and that will pose a huge dilemma for many French voters afterwards. Now, France is not the only country in Europe experiencing violent protests at the moment, but this does seem to be giving a rather dismal image of the country abroad. There's nothing worse than these kind of riots to give a disastrous image of France overseas. I expect you, like I, many other people working here at France 24, received phone calls and messages from people asking if we are safe, whether there are problems where we live. So there was a lot of concern, shock, worry around the world about what is happening in this country. I think people can't believe that France, being one of the major countries of the world, part of the g7 uh is uh at the hands of so many people causing trouble right now it's a disastrous image and one of the long-term effects of that of course is to affect tourism uh the last time there were protests by agricultural workers by farmers in france back in 2023 uh that brought down tourism by about three percent but they were nothing on the scale of the protests we saw over the weekend uh in paris and other cities and towns around the country so that's bad news for hotel owners for restaurants for cafes bars who will take the hit from that as well as many of them seeing their establishments are raided by rioters so it's not good news for france and i think that one of the problems is that many overseas people who watch television who read the papers and who see this going on will say well we don't want to go to france it's just too dangerous. We will take our vacation somewhere else and we'll go to France later on. And that's not good news for the French economy, which is already suffering from this huge debt that it has to reimburse. Thank you very much for that. Our international affairs editor, Philip Terrell.