The police killing of a teenager on Tuesday (27 June), and the riots it has sparked across France, casts a big shadow over the success of President Emmanuel Macron’s plan of ‘100 days of appeasement’, first introduced after the approval of a much-decried pensions reform in April.
On Tuesday, 17-year-old Nahel was shot dead by a policeman after refusing to cooperate and step out of the car he was driving following a chase in Nanterre, a town outside Paris.
In a (graphic) video taken by a passer-by, the policeman shouts: “You’re about to get a bullet in your head,” seconds before he fires as Nahel tries to drive off.
The force’s official version of events said the car had threatened to run over the policemen – who had no choice but to shoot in self-defence. The video, however, tells an entirely different story: one of a tense exchange, but where the policeman’s life is in no way at risk or immediately endangered.
The killing is horrific and speaks to the complete breakdown in relations between police forces and parts of French society – especially citizens from the ‘banlieues’, an umbrella and reductive term for run-down towns that border France’s cities, often economically deprived, neglected by the state, and dubbed by many as hotbeds of lawlessness.
Thirteen people were shot by the police in France in 2022, following “refusal to cooperate” (“refus d’obtempérer”), six more than in 2021. In Germany, this number is one in ten years.
Nationwide riots have been underway since Tuesday, with 40,000 officers deployed to “bring back Republican order”, as the phrase goes. By the time this Brief was published, 875 people had been arrested.
It would be naïve to see Nahel’s death as an idiosyncratic event, a one-off that speaks more to a policeman’s misconduct than a systemic problem.
The statistics show that police brutality in France is real – and escalating.
Recent years have seen a surge in violence in police-population face-offs. Physical attacks against police staff have doubled in the past few years, official statistics show, with some decrying a “normalisation” of violence.
The police’s rough handling of the protests that followed the deeply unpopular pension reform further speaks to a system-wide problem where confrontation trumps mediation, and police distrust prevails until proven otherwise.
Failure to appease
President Macron had promised “100 days of appeasement” once the pension reform was pushed through in April, to build back social trust through the shared values of meritocracy and work.
But events of the past few days show appeasement is nowhere to be seen. “Violence was ready to erupt,” LDH, a human rights group, said. All it needed was a spark, and Nahel’s death was the catalyst.
Earlier on Friday (30 June), the UN called on France to address “the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement”.
The current crisis is intrinsically linked to, if not partly triggered by, the economic reality of the past year: inflation has eaten up purchasing power and will bite even harder once the government phases out energy caps, which it has already started doing.
Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire’s die-hard ambition to “accelerate” debt reduction raises further fears of austerity, as heavy cuts in public spending are expected – €60 billion by 2027, the French Court of Auditors estimates.
As for people’s working conditions, which Macron so adamantly wants to improve, they rank among the lowest in the EU when it comes to access to mental health services, stress management, and feeling of autonomy.
France also ranks third-highest, after Denmark and the Netherlands, for experiences of intimidation – including verbal abuse, unwanted sexual attention or bullying.
All of this put together makes for a fractured societal make-up, where tensions run high and quickly become inflammatory. The issue of police violence crystallises a growing and widely-spread sense of anger and powerlessness that has been slowly building.
Nahel’s killing is a wake-up call for an urgent and in-depth review of police-population ties and, more broadly, a re-questioning of what glues the country together as one society. It is a daunting question, but one that badly needs answering.
Genuine “appeasement” is urgent, and it will take more than a hundred days.
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The Roundup
EU leaders failed to resolve a bitter dispute on reform of the bloc’s migration rules after Poland and Hungary refused to back down in their standoff with the 25 other EU leaders.
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced on Friday (30 June) what he termed “unacceptable” attempts to use the recent death of a teenager at the hands of the police to spread riots across the country.
Germany’s Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir has warned against polarising debates around agriculture and climate policy while criticising attempts to torpedo green legislation at the EU level.
EU ministers and the European Parliament have reached an agreement on a Farm Sustainability Data Network meant to boost sustainability in agriculture by collecting and sharing on-farm data.
Despite being the poorest country in the EU with the lowest wages, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) found Bulgaria is positioned well in the European labour market and is among the leaders regarding job creation, ranking 7th among 27 member states.
Adaptation is a key part of restoring Europe’s forests and improving their resilience to climate change-related risks such as pests and wildfires, forestry expert Bernhard Wolfslehner told EURACTIV in an interview.
Central and Eastern European countries display low ambitions with their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), raising concerns about the region’s ability to meet EU climate goals, campaigners warn.
Gas shortage anxiety prompted Germany to go on a buying spree last year in order to fill storage facilities for the winter, leaving consumers to pick up a bill now estimated at around €7 billion.
While carrying out work to check the risk of firedamp pockets in the abandoned mines of the Lorraine region in May, La Française d’Énergie (FDE) discovered a large deposit of natural hydrogen, igniting hopes that it could be a game changer in Europe’s energy transition.
Don’t miss this week’s Tech Brief for a round-up of weekly policy news.
Look out for…
- Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas participates in roundtable discussion on challenges of Europe in Valencia on Saturday.
- Commissioner Kadri Simson joins panel on “Energy Sustainability Trilemma” at 8th OPEC International Seminar next week.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Alice Taylor/Zoran Radosavljevic]
Source: euractiv.com
