Manuel Bompard, national coordinator of La France insoumise (LFI), said he will use a meeting with Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu at Matignon on Thursday, October 22, to demand apologies over the government's handling of the violence that followed the October 17 demonstrations. Speaking on BFMTV and RMC, Bompard said he wants "apologies, explanations and answers" from the prime minister. Lecornu is receiving political party representatives in the early afternoon, alongside Laurent Nuñez, Gérald Darmanin, intelligence service chiefs and heads of the security forces, according to BFM.
The meeting comes five days after the unrest and two days before a fresh day of mobilisation called for Saturday, October 24. Bompard said the apologies should go first to the French public for what he called the fiasco of Saturday's events, and also to LFI, which he said has faced days of manoeuvring aimed at making it appear responsible for violence the party has always rejected.
Why it matters
The talks at Matignon are the government's attempt to lower the temperature before Saturday's demonstrations. President Emmanuel Macron, back in France after a three-day trip, separately summoned all intelligence services to the Élysée, according to Le Monde and Le Figaro, after they were accused of failing to anticipate the scale of the mobilisation. The gathering puts party leaders face to face with the ministers and agencies that will police the next round of protests, and it will test whether the executive can move the conversation from security to politics.
LFI to take the revelations to court
Bompard confirmed on BFMTV and RMC that LFI will refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the Republic following reporting by Mediapart that French intelligence services were instructed to pin responsibility for the recent disturbances on LFI. He also wants those revelations examined by the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the October 17 events, BFM reports.
The LFI leader criticised prefectural bans on demonstrations in several major cities and objected to the framing that hundreds of thousands of protesters bear responsibility for the violence. In his view, legitimate grievances have gone unanswered, and it is not up to LFI, trade unions or demonstrators to guarantee the right to protest. He promised that at the Matignon meeting "we will talk about subjects he does not want us to talk about," and said he expects the government to abandon what he described as a strategy of letting the situation fester and to acknowledge that anger on this scale requires a response.
LFI will be represented at the meeting, but Jean-Luc Mélenchon has already said the party intends to disrupt it. Clémence Guetté, a vice-president of the National Assembly and head of LFI's presidential programme, told France 2 that the party rejects the framing proposed by the prime minister, which she said amounted to a lecture on policing and order. LFI wants to put forward a different agenda and sent a letter to the prime minister on Thursday morning listing the topics it wants covered: the demands of school students, the cost of living and purchasing power, and security.
Allies and rivals set out their positions
Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Socialist Party, told France Info that the executive is sliding from a necessary political response toward an exclusively security-based one. He argued that a subject which is fundamentally political cannot be handled only through a security lens.
The far-right Rassemblement national will be represented by Edwige Diaz and Louis Aliot. Diaz, who chairs the party's new Senate group, said on TF1 that they will listen to the prime minister and tell him the events of last Saturday could have been avoided.
Bally Bagayoko, the LFI mayor of Saint-Denis and Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, said the debate has centred on a violent minority rather than on what demonstrators were demanding on October 17. He condemned the looting and called for affected shopkeepers to be compensated, while also describing what he called institutional violence that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. He stood by his earlier remark that violence can be legitimate and said he does not regret it.
Security measures and a legal challenge
Ahead of Saturday, Laurent Nuñez has sent instructions to prefects asking them in particular to ban gatherings likely to disturb public order, according to BFM. The Paris police prefecture's platform, opened after the recent looting, has received 350 videos of pillaging, BFMTV reports.
In Lyon, Tom Rioufol, president of the UNEF branch in the city, announced on BFM Lyon that a legal challenge has been filed against the Rhône prefecture's ban on a demonstration scheduled for Thursday afternoon. The challenge was lodged together with the League of Human Rights and the Lawyers' Union of France, he said.
Attention now turns to Saturday's mobilisation and whether the Matignon talks produce any shift in the government's approach before then.
