France deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes Thursday for a nationwide strike over wages and the cost of living, the latest test in a wave of youth-led protests that has brought looting and arson to cities from Paris to Frankfurt to Milan.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the operation would include helicopters, drones, armored vehicles and water cannon, RFI reported. Police estimated that 500,000 to 700,000 people could march outside the Paris region and 40,000 to 80,000 in the capital.
Paris police barred the unions’ Bastille-to-Concorde route and authorized a march from République to Nation. In Toulouse, a court upheld a ban on marching in the city center. Early Thursday, police dispersed students outside a high school in eastern Paris before calm returned, CNews reported.
Six weeks of unrest
The movement began in September with high school students protesting crowded classrooms and teacher shortages. On Oct. 17, the Interior Ministry counted 550,000 demonstrators, and rioting and looting swept several cities. Police made 2,628 arrests that day, Brussels Signal reported, citing AP. About 1,500 shops were damaged, according to a French retail trade group.
On Oct. 31, 779 people were arrested and 159 officers were hurt. Paris prosecutors opened an attempted-homicide investigation after a Molotov cocktail struck a gendarme.
The unrest crossed into Germany the same night, when “Gen Z” marches turned violent in Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg. In Frankfurt, rioters damaged 17 shops and looted five, including a gun store, and about 100 officers were hurt, The Spectator reported. Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt blamed “left-wing groups and troublemakers from a migrant background.”
Roman Poseck, the interior minister of Hesse, said most of the more than 50 people arrested in Frankfurt were from a “migration background” and that there “must be no false taboos,” according to The Spectator. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said nearly half of those detained after rioting in Milan were of migrant origin.
A tax for the riots
France’s answer includes a bill for law-abiding citizens. A 0.8% levy on home, vehicle and business insurance policies is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2027, to fund a state-backed riot compensation pool, Brussels Signal reported. It is expected to raise about 400 million euros a year. It still needs Council of State and European Commission approval.
‼️ Mass protests are taking place across France: up to 700,000 participants expected Around 220 demonstrations are planned across the country. Between 40,000 and 80,000 people are expected in Paris. Some 16% of teachers have gone on strike, and operations at a third of universities have been disrupted. In the commune of Tournefeuille, protesters set fire to a school building. The fire was extinguished and no one was injured. In Lyon, around 500 members of the Black Bloc movement smashed the windows of an employment centre and clashed with police. Authorities have deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes to maintain order. The protests have been ongoing since October 17. Initially, they were aimed at rising prices and problems in the education sector, but have repeatedly escalated into clashes with police and riots. https://t.co/OAKlxPYFfW
— KobeJordan (@timothybumper) November 5, 2026
MoDem lawmakers called it “double taxation” imposed on citizens “when the State has failed in its mission.” The ratings agency Morningstar DBRS warned that the October riots alone could cost insurers up to 1.2 billion euros.
Eurozone inflation reached 4% in October, the highest in three years, with energy prices up 20.8% from a year earlier, according to Eurostat. France’s deficit is forecast at 5.4% of GDP, far above the EU’s 3% limit.
The bottom line
Europe’s governments spent decades promising that heavy taxes, generous benefits and open borders would produce stable, contented societies. The result is a continent where prices are climbing, budgets are stretched past their limits, and ministers in France, Germany and Italy are pointing to poorly assimilated migrant youth among the looters.
France’s response makes it worse. Charging every family that insures a car or a house for the damage done by rioters punishes the people who obey the law, and it tells the rioters that someone else will pay.
Americans should take the lesson. Cities that fail to prosecute looting get more of it, and immigration without assimilation builds resentment that surfaces in the streets. The answer is to enforce the law, keep government spending within what taxpayers can bear, and admit newcomers only at a pace the country can absorb.