Macron needs to get a grip on police brutality and social exclusion

Editorial: With French police unions almost literally pouring petrol on the flames by describing rioters as ‘vermin’ and ‘savage hordes’, the president must act urgently to prevent his society imploding

The threat of full-blown xenophobia taking over French politics is more real now than it has ever been (AFP via Getty)

The Independent would not dream of lecturing the French on their affairs, but as neighbours we would observe: Paris, we have a problem. The situation in France seems to be more serious than other recent disturbances, such as this year’s protests against pensions reform and the gilets jaunes riots of five years ago.

Indeed, the current wave of unrest is more like, and potentially more serious than, the three weeks of rioting that followed the electrocution of two teenagers who hid in an electricity substation to escape from the police in 2005.

This time, the French police seem more at fault – or, at least, the officer who shot and killed Nahel, the 17-year-old, seems to have no defence for his action. In contrast, the response of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, seems to have been more responsible than that of Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister 18 years ago. President Macron called the shooting “inexplicable and inexcusable”, whereas Mr Sarkozy called the dead teenagers thieves and stoked tensions in 2005.