French PM Sebastien Lecornu meets with leaders of political parties amid unrest

Our party leaders have arrived at Matignon for high-stakes talks with Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, ministers and security chiefs. The aim? Prevent another weekend of violence after Saturday's riots and looting. But divisions are already emerging, with opposition figures demanding answers on living costs and warning that policing alone cannot resolve the social crisis. Let's get the latest now with Luc Schrager. He joins us live. Luc, thanks so much for joining us. What exactly is under discussion as we sit? well the meeting's been underway for about a half an hour now with a lot of arrivals going on here at the prime minister's office in the paris city center now for Sébastien Lecornu the prime minister the aim is to get politicians on the same page the idea is to run through three points condemning the rioting and the violence that we all saw from last weekend on october 17th during a protest to defend the police and to update its security doctrine to inform politicians exactly how that they would be handling security moving forward considering the fierce criticism that they've come under since that rioting went ahead last weekend. And to discuss security issues around the presidential elections, Lecornu earlier stating that he feared that there would be an attempt to derail a democratic process. Now, Luke, I think one of the more interesting features of this meeting is who is and who isn't present. Now, we've already had some consternation very much from the extremes of the French political spectrum. Looking at the national rally, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella are not in attendance. They've sent Louise Alliot and Edwige Diaz. We've also had word from France Unbowed on the left, the hard left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Manuel Bompard potentially arriving there and speaking with everyone. Just what exactly has been said politically? What are the reactions? Well, it has to be said that party leaders have indeed in a great deal snubbed the meeting, sending other representatives from their party here to meet Sébastien Lecornu. And on their way in, they have few have been indicated that they expect anything concrete to come out of this meeting. The reactions have been very similar no matter what part of the political spectrum things are coming from. But they have said that the government wants to talk about everything except the causes for the social unrest and the cause of the rioting to begin with. They've said that any attempts to ban or prevent demonstrations from going ahead are anti-democratic and that they've said that the government doesn't understand that the crisis is social in nature. Now, you mentioned Emmanuel Bompard there. He is the France Unbowed party coordinator. He spoke to journalists before he went inside the Matignon that you can see just behind me. He was saying that he would demand an explanation and an apology for the words of the government. Now, the government has been at loggerheads with France Unbowed for quite some time now over the causes of the protest. The government's been saying that it's left-wing, far left-wing groups fermenting the unrest, using inflammatory rhetoric to stoke tensions, whereas France Unbowed, for its part, denies this, saying that it's simply the government's fault because it hasn't addressed any of the grievances that the protesters have to begin with. Now, he's been saying that he wants both an apology and concrete measures that will be taken to respond to the demonstrators. This is the same kind of thing that we've been hearing the whole way through. Every politician that I've spoken to said that the government has simply not done enough or if anything at all to respond to these demands in terms of social unrest and the cost of living crisis that is sparking the unrest to begin with. the problem for the government of course it has said that it would be coming up with a timetable to respond to some of them but few have expected anything concrete moving forward because the government as we know has already got its hands tied by this budgetary crisis it wants to cut 54 billion euros in public spending to get its public spending under control but everyone now protesting these protests have grown from student protests uh protesting the conditions in french education institutions to a much wider collection, a basket of grievances against the government, the cost of living crisis, people unable to make ends meet. And while Sebastien Lecornu has said that there would be a timetable, he has said that he would be doing that within the framework of already existing budgetary restrictions. So I think that moving forward, there's going to be very little coming out of this meeting concretely today. And they had already approved about 1.2 billion euros for education additional for next year luke thank you so much that was though nowhere near the 10 billion that was demanded by student protest leaders