Who Signs the Curfew

The first curfews of France’s weekend unrest were ordered on Monday 19 October, and none of them came from Paris. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu asked for them at midday. The prefect of the Nord signed them in the late afternoon, for four towns, for two nights, and only for children.

“J’ai demandé aux préfets de déclencher un certain nombre de couvre-feux pour ce soir,” Mr Lecornu said after a meeting of the government’s interministerial crisis cell, according to Reuters’ live coverage: he had asked the prefects to trigger a number of curfews for that evening, partial ones, worked out with mayors and chambers of commerce. “Il n’est pas question de mettre tout Paris sous couvre-feu, ça n’aurait pas de sens,” he added. Putting all of Paris under curfew, in other words, was out of the question.

What was signed

By 18:00 a source at Matignon was telling Reuters that the prefect of the northern defence zone had issued an order imposing a curfew from 20:00 to 06:00 for the next two nights in Lille, Douai, Wattignies and Denain, with the agreement of each mayor. Matignon then added the qualification that changes what the word means: the curfews apply only to minors, franceinfo reported. The Nord prefecture said they would cover “portions” of the four towns, not the whole of them, and it told France 3 that the orders would be drawn up “en étroite collaboration avec les maires concernés.” More than 80 shops in Lille were ransacked or looted at the weekend, according to the same report.

Denain had already acted on its own. Its mayor, Anne-Lise Dufour-Tonini, announced a curfew on Sunday for the whole town and its roughly 20,000 residents, running until 25 October, then replaced it with an amending order limited to parts of the town centre and to minors without a parent or responsible adult, franceinfo reported. France 3 gives the hours of the mayor’s order as 22:30 to 06:00. Elsewhere the measures that were taken were of the older kind: the Bouches-du-Rhône police prefecture banned all gatherings in Marseille between noon and 20:00 on Monday.

The power being used

None of the published reports names the article of law on which the Nord orders rest, and the orders themselves had not been published when this was written. What the courts have said about curfews for minors sets the frame. In an order of 10 May 2024 on a prefect’s curfew in Guadeloupe, the Conseil d’État held that the authority holding general police powers under Articles L. 2212-1 and following of the local authorities code may restrict the movement of minors, “en fonction de circonstances locales particulières.” It also cited Article L. 132-8 of the Code of Internal Security, under which the prefect may restrict the night-time movement of children under 13 when their health, safety, education or morals are at manifest risk.

The same order sets the test. A restriction is lawful only if it is justified by particular risks of public disorder “auxquels ces mineurs seraient exposés ou dont ils seraient les auteurs” in the areas covered, and if it is adapted and proportionate. The Guadeloupe curfew, 20:00 to 05:00 for unaccompanied minors in named districts, survived because it was limited to the worst-affected areas and to a month, and because the order said it would be reviewed before any renewal. A two-night order for “portions” of four towns is built to the same pattern.

A state of emergency would be a different instrument, declared by decree in the Council of Ministers, as this publication set out when Emmanuel Macron declined to declare one on Sunday. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told France Inter on Monday that it remained an option for a grave threat or imminent danger but was not needed for now, according to Reuters. Mr Lecornu said partial curfews seemed “more appropriate” at this stage, Al Jazeera reported, citing Reuters.

The minister who offered to go

Mr Nuñez offered his resignation on Monday morning and the president refused it. The Élysée announced at about 07:20 that Mr Macron had rejected the offer and asked him to put in place new measures against looters, Reuters reported. On France Inter, Mr Nuñez said: “Je remets ma démission parce que je suis responsable de tout ce qui se passe.” He offered it because, in his words, he was responsible for everything that was happening. According to Al Jazeera, the Élysée said he should stay to maintain the chain of command in the police and security forces, and asked him to “take all necessary steps to ensure transparency over the failures in planning and intelligence that led to the violence.”

His account of the weekend has two halves. He acknowledged a “lack of anticipation” and said of Saturday that “you couldn’t look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn’t lost control,” Al Jazeera reported; he put the number of law enforcement personnel deployed that day at about 60,000. On the same radio programme he said “la situation n’est pas hors de contrôle”: the situation, as of Monday, is not out of control.

Two counts that measure different things

Two national figures were in circulation on Monday, and they are not competing estimates of one number. The Interior Ministry’s consolidated tally, published on Sunday evening and reported by CNews, was 2,397 arrests on Saturday, a count of interpellations. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin gave a figure of more than 2,330 people placed in police custody over the weekend, 70 percent of them adults, Al Jazeera reported. Custody, the garde à vue, is a later step that not every arrest reaches, and the two figures also cover different periods. The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said 557 people had been held in custody after Saturday in the capital, 433 of them adults, according to Reuters. None of these is a count of people charged.

The rest of Monday’s response ran on the same kind of authority. The commerce minister, Serge Papin, said at least 3,000 businesses had been damaged or looted, and Mr Lecornu said short-time working support for affected shops would be triggered from Tuesday “par une instruction ministérielle,” at 100 percent, without the usual delays, Reuters reported. The Yellow Vest coordination has called a second day of protest for Saturday, Reuters reported, citing several French outlets.

By Monday night France had a prime minister’s request, a prefect’s signature, four mayors’ consent, and an age limit. The prefect’s orders expire at 06:00 on Wednesday unless someone signs another.