0:00 Limoge Town Hall, central France last night. Its roof moments from collapsing. >> Taking with it the building's ornate 19th century clock tower. This morning, the town's mayor said police had been overwhelmed by a mob who used a battering ram to get in. This local resident said the scene broke her heart. "I saw NRAAM all over again," she said. Today's scenes of destruction across parts of France elicited a vow from Emanuel Macron to prosecute those involved. The president will also address the nation this evening. But the challenges he faces go far deeper than a hunt to identify last night's rioters and losers. Grievances around education and the state of other public services had fueled weeks of largely peaceful protests. 1:01 >> What developed yesterday marked some of the worst rioting seen in France in years. This one of the many shops looted in Paris. It followed running battles between police and protesters in the city center. Over 2,000 arrests were made. This was the scene yesterday in Strasburg. Leon Marles. 1:40 One person reportedly died from a heart attack. A teenager lost his hand after grabbing a stun grenade. Hundreds of police officers were said to have been injured and reported one trade group around 1500 shops damaged. >> Is this what it's going to be like for every single demonstration? It can't be. If every protest ends with all the shop windows smashed and stores trashed, this simply cannot go on. It cannot go on. >> This evening, Emanuel Mcron held an emergency meeting with government officials. His ministers blame ultral-left groups and criminals for the violence while political opponents on the far right talk of national humiliation. The pressure mounts just like the national debt on an outgoing president 6 months from elections. While once again this afternoon, the center of Paris echoed to a familiar sound. Tear gas filling the air, tensions 2:42 clearly visible as the French government decides what comes next. >> Andy Davis there on the current unrest across France. Now paving stones have been removed from the capital of Albania's main boulevard. That's after protests has held them at police in increasingly violent clashes there. Student-led demonstrations fueled by anger over perceived government corruption, unemployment, and poor education standards engulfed central tana and spread to other cities across the week. Protesters want the prime minister Eddie Rama to resign and had burned government buildings and banks during the protest. Police responded with tear gas, water cannon, and rubber bullets. Well, a little earlier I spoke to Philip Moro Chevrolet who's the political scientist at the Seos Poe University in Paris and I asked him where does France go now after yesterday's events. So the first thing to understand is that there is a presidential election in a few months in six months actually. The 3:42 leading candidate is the farright candidate Marin Le Pen and she's been strongly attacking the president in a recent declaration. It it just happened a few minutes ago really and she she accused the president of being responsible for the events of yesterday for the riots in in Paris and we expect the president tonight at 8:00 French time to do a strong statement also we expect that he will declare a state of emergency for instance that would allow the police to have wider extended powers in order to be searching for instance in people's uh cars. or even homes. And we expect that maybe he will dismiss one of his minister ministers and especially the arms secretary that has been really accused of not being efficient in this crisis. We expect decisions to be made because the country can of needs to recover from what happened yesterday. The first thing 4:42 is we need to be reassured that safety will be ensured for the months to come and that these events won't happen ever again. >> Well, if uh a state of emergency is declared, is that not exactly what Marine Le Pen and the far right want to happen? It makes things worse perhaps. >> If a state of emergency is declared, it's exactly what the far right was expecting and it's exactly what the far left was expecting. We have two strong populist parties. This is a moment for France. We haven't seen anything like this since, I don't know, May 68 and and de Gaulle coming on and saying, you know, I've got a mandate. I'm going to fulfill it and trying to pull France together. It's that serious, isn't it? >> Yes, it's that serious because we are in a presidential year. We had riots at the very beginning of Macron's mandate, first mandate in 2017, 2018, but obviously he was in a kind of a he was a new president. he had more, you know, ability to move on the political spectrum. He was more clever about it. 5:44 Maybe he was less tired than he is today and he was more popular. So, it was a very uh it was an easier situation. And the way he got out of it, it was the yellow vest movement if you uh remember that. And the way he got out of it was by organizing what we called a grandba a big debate and he went on a tour in France talking to everyone for like a year and it was very successful but obviously he can't repeat that is at the end of his mandate and now we are looking for the successor and it's playing really in the end of a far right far left kind of succession scheme on the second run of the election with the far right by a large large margin. Well, you mentioned Phipe the um the yellow vest, the Jill Jeon. We have them back on the scene suddenly out of nowhere right through the trade union movement right through to the students. This is a kind of bizarre grand coalition across the political spectrum, isn't it? The the main mood in France is the anger. We 6:45 are all angry about something. Everyone is angry. You can't even talk about politics without getting angry at each other. And it's on the molecular level. So on the bigger scale, it it produces that people are angry together. But that's not that doesn't mean that they are kind of fighting on the same side. The yellow vest are very much more on the right side. Even the far right side, they are leaning on, you know, plotted theories. They are much more closer to what you could call a French MAGA movement. And the uh what we saw this weekend was more on the far left side and on the france side. And it's not the same thing. And they're trying to, you know, coales. They try to gather these two blocks and together in order to build a big movement on the left or the right. But it's not working. They are really separated from each other. >> And of course, you say there is anger in France, there's anger in Albania. Goodness me, today. There's anger in Italy. There's anger in Portugal. How do you read this panuropean 7:46 um emotion, mood? uh first of all it means one thing we have globalization nowadays operating in a political field you can't think about politics on the national level it's over what you have in the UK regarding far for instance you know is connections with outside parties outside countries that's not something that that is uncommon now everyone is connected and what we observe are larger movements especially on the far left and the far right larger movements that are interconnected Philip Chevrolet, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
